Barclays is expected to appoint Sir Ian Cheshire as chairman of its UK-based operations. News reports said the bank’s application in this regard has been approved by the UK banking regulator Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA). As chairman of Barclays UK, Sir Ian will oversee a business comprising the group’s high street branch network in Britain, as well as its business banking and Barclaycard operations in its home market. With roughly 22 million retail customers and almost one million business banking clients, it will be one of the largest UK-based lenders, and will be run by Ashok Vaswani, its chief executive. Most of Barclays’ international and investment banking activities will sit within a new non-ring-fenced entity run by Tim Throsby, a former JP Morgan executive. The two parts of the business will, in accordance with the post-crisis framework proposed by Sir John Vickers in 2011, have separate funding regimes, allowing the retail bank to continue functioning even if the non-ring-fenced lender were to become insolvent.
