Barclays Plans Layoffs In EU Leveraged Finance Loans

Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of U.K. bank Barclays PLC (BCS), plans to make around 50 people redundant in its European leveraged finance, loans and sales divisions, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

The U.K. bank started redundancy negotiations with employees in these divisions, most of whom are located in the London office, Thursday, the person said.

The layoff plans at Barclays Capital come after the bank made just under 100 people redundant in June in its investment banking, leveraged finance and information technology divisions.

The bank has previously stated that it expects staffing levels to remain broadly unchanged over this year after discounting the bank's acquisition of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s (MER) U.S. broker-dealer operations.

The U.K. bank took on board an extra 4,000-5,000 staff in the U.S. when it acquired this business in October after Lehman filed for bankruptcy in mid- September.

These moves represent a relatively modest trimming of staff compared with the layoffs seen at many other investment banks. Deutsche Bank AG (DB) expects to cut 900 jobs by the end of the year, according to Financial News.

Analysts say Barclays has performed better than many other European investment banks because it hasn't incurred the same size of losses on complex structured products some other banks have, probably partly because it has strong internal risk management controls.

The bank is also a big player in market sectors that have been performing well recently including commodities, foreign exchange and interest rates.

"So far, Barclays has managed to mitigate the effects of falling industry revenues by gaining (market) share, partly because of their mix, but also because management has not suffered a loss-driven collapse in confidence in their investment banking business," said Bruno Paulson, a senior research analyst at Sanford C Bernstein Ltd.

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Barclays Plans Layoffs In EU Leveraged Finance Loans