Yahoo Finance Ex-Barclays Boss Takes Currencies Direct Role
The former Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) chief Antony Jenkins is to take his first corporate directorship since leaving the banking group 13 months ago.
Sky News has learnt that Mr Jenkins has agreed to become chairman of Currencies Direct, a privately owned provider of foreign exchange and international payment services.
His appointment, which sources said would be announced in the coming days, will mark a return to the corporate arena just over a year after his controversial ousting by the Barclays board.
Some of the bank's major shareholders were dismayed at the brutality of his treatment by the chairman, John McFarlane, after a three-year stint in which Mr Jenkins had sought to repair fractured relations with regulators.
He had also begun to accelerate a cost-cutting programme involving the loss of thousands of jobs, a process he has since argued has been made increasingly necessary in the banking industry by the move towards digital services.
Earlier this year he was awarded a bonus of just over £500,000 for 2015, signalling a belief in the Barclays boardroom that he had achieved a substantial amount before he was sacked.
Less than a month after he left, Barclays unveiled a strong set of half-year results, with net profit rising 43% and returns from its investment bank showing substantial improvement.
Mr Jenkins' appointment as the chairman of Currencies Direct will come a year after the foreign-exchange company was acquired by Corsair Capital and Palamon Capital Partners, two private equity firms.
The deal valued Currencies Direct, which provides services to more than 150,000 retail clients, at more than £200m.
Its e-commerce business is said to be growing rapidly, a trend which is likely to have played a role in Mr Jenkins' decision to accept the chairmanship.
In addition to the Currencies Direct role he chairs Business in the Community and in June was named as the shadow chairman of the Institute for Apprenticeships.
He has also laid the foundations for his own venture in financial technology, having predicted that emerging companies will outpace the development of established businesses in banking and other sectors.
Mr Jenkins predicted in a speech earlier this year that the number of "branches and people employed in the financial services sector may decline by as much as 50% over the next ten years".
Neither Currencies Direct nor the former Barclays chief could be reached for comment on Thursday night.
