Johannesburg - Barclays’ South African unit said its investment bank planned to extend brokerage, equity trading and other services into the rest of the continent as part of a two-year plan to boost profit.
“We’re in the top 10 in Africa, we’ve got to get to the top five,” Stephen van Coller, the head of Absa Capital, the Johannesburg-based investment bank of Barclays Africa Group, said. “Trading and investment banking has an African focus now.”
Absa Capital is bidding to win corporate clients and market share in Africa as competition from Rand Merchant Bank and Goldman Sachs reduces opportunities in South Africa.
The expansion on the continent comes as Barclays, the owner of 62.3 percent of the South African lender, cuts jobs in the UK.
Absa Capital, South Africa’s largest seller of corporate debt, would target bond sales, Van Coller said.
Dollar-bond sales from African governments and companies rose to a record $9.68 billion (R107bn) last year from $6.04bn in 2012, Megan McDonald, Standard Bank’s head of debt primary markets, said in October last year.
Following the South African unit’s purchase of Barclays’ operations in eight African countries last year, the investment bank has access to offices, customers, staff and information in nations including Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique and Botswana.
One of the investment bank’s goals was to increase corporate clients and win multinational business by using an online banking tool developed by its parent company, Van Coller said.
Barclays.net offered a range of services, including allowing company treasurers to use an iPad to pay salary bills across several countries in multiple currencies, he said.
“We can properly compete for the multinationals” and challenge banks like Citigroup, which used a tool called CitiDirect to attract corporate clients, he said.
Absa Capital, which started offering the online tool in South Africa in September last year, is targeting a 10-fold increase to 300 corporate customers using Barclays.net this year. “Then we can start being truly competitive on African cross-border transactions.”
Carrefour, France’s largest retailer, Nissan Motor and Marriott International, the US’s largest publicly traded hotel chain, are among the companies planning to expand into Africa as the World Bank forecasts growth on the continent to accelerate to 6.7 percent this year.
Barclays, the UK’s second-largest bank by assets, might eliminate 520 corporate-banking jobs to reduce costs, labour union Unite said on Thursday. The London-based lender also planned to cut hundreds of jobs at its investment bank, a person with knowledge of the discussions said last week.
Barclays chief executive Antony Jenkins said last February that he was seeking to remove £1.7bn (R31bn) of annual expenses by 2015, eliminating 3 700 positions. – Bloomberg