Barclays: a step back in time

Interesting that earlier this week Barclays appointed one of its former advisers as its new finance director. Naguib Kheraj is leaving in the spring - ostensibly to the timing is to allow the new chap, Chris Lucas, to be clear of regulatory handcuffs that prevent him taking a senior management role at the bank before the 2006 results are signed off. Why?

Well, Lucas is currently employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers where he is UK Head of Financial Services and Global Head of Banking and Capital Markets - and was Global Relationship Partner for Barclays from 1999 to 2004. That prevents him moving across until a decent interval is deemed to have passed.

Two things. First, what's up with Kheraj? A high-flyer, one can only assume he'll pop up in a CEO role in the not-to-distant. There's certainly no suggestion he was lame in the role (anything but), although he has suggested that he was fed up with the FD role and all the red tape that accompanies it in a large quoted bank like Barclays. In a year-old interview with AccyAge he said: "I wouldn’t rule it out [going for a chief executive role], but I think it’s unlikely. It’s more likely I would do something more akin to what I’ve done in the past, which has been to go back to advising on transactions or working in private equity. I don’t have any firm views at the moment." I guess his views have firmed up a little in the past 12 months...

Second, how long has it been since a major FD post was filled by someone directly from a professional services firm? Of course it happens, but I think the idea that a modern CFO could handle the job without some experience of business has faded somewhat. Time was when a highly technically skilled accountant could just step into the FD seat. But without that broader sense of strategy, of how operations work, about communication, about politics... well, it's just much tougher these days to be an effective FD. Lucas obviously knows Barclays well. But will he make a great CFO?

and interestingly, of course, they've gone from a CFO who wasn't an accountant to one who has no business experience. Feast or famine...