Barclays names former Credit Suisse dealmaker Deasy as investment banking co-head

LONDON (Reuters) -Barclays has appointed former Credit Suisse dealmaker Cathal Deasy as co-head of investment banking, the lender said on Tuesday, as Chief Executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan seeks to grow the business and plan for succession.

Deasy will work alongside Taylor Wright, the co-head of global capital markets, the British bank said.

The changes were part of the bank "fostering the next generation of leadership and thinking," Venkatakrishnan, known internally as Venkat, said in a memo about the moves that was seen by Reuters.

Venkat is being treated for a form of cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma, he said in November, adding that doctors are optimistic about his prognosis and that he would continue to be involved in the running of the bank.

Deasy left Credit Suisse a few weeks ago, just months after being promoted to regional co-head of its investment banking & capital markets (IBCM) unit.

At Credit Suisse, he managed some of the bank's biggest client relationships in Europe, having spent nine years beforehand at Deutsche Bank, according to the internal Barclays memo.

JF Astier and John Miller, who currently lead investment banking, are in "active dialogue" with Barclays about what roles they might now take, a Barclays spokesperson said.

Astier and Miller were promoted in 2021 to lead investment banking as part of a new management team.

Barclays' investment bank has had a strong performance in recent quarters, thanks in part to a boom in fixed income trading, which has traditionally been one of its core strengths.

Recent results have been blighted however by a trading blunder last year that saw Barclays agree a penalty of $361 million with U.S. regulators for what they described as "staggering" failures that led the bank to oversell nearly $18 billion worth of investment products.

(Reporting by Baranjot Kaur in Bengaluru and Lawrence White in London; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Bill Berkrot)