Barclays wants to grow its credit card, investment banking and investment management operations in the U.S., and some of its top brass are moving stateside to make it happen. London-based Jerry del Missier, president of the investment banking unit Barclays Capital, moved to New York in March. Now for a little star power. The British bank has hired Archibald (Archie) Cox Jr., a veteran banker and son of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox, as chairman of Barclays Americas. Cox, who takes up his post this month and will report to Barclays president Robert Diamond, says the bank has some catching up to do. “We’re already well under way in Europe and Asia, but we’re behind in the U.S.,” notes the banker, who played catch-up successfully in establishing Morgan Stanley’s European franchise in the 1970s and ’80s and later helped stabilize First Boston Corp. as its CEO in the early 1990s. Cox, 67, who has been running Sextant Group, an advisory and private equity firm he founded in 1993, says Barclays’ culture lured him back into banking. “It’s almost a throwback to how investment banks used to be, when they were driven by clients, not proprietary trading revenues,” he says. “Investment banks should remember who their clients are, unless they want to give that up and become a hedge fund.”
