On May 8th Barclays announced its withdrawal from Europe as new Chief Executive Anthony Jenkins made a decision to trim the operations and scale of the business.
Today’s announcement from the local banking union that Barclays has no intention entirely of leaving Portugal and that the bank is to keep three business areas in the domestic market, has further unsettled both staff and customers.
Shortly after the closure announcement from London, Portugal’s National Union of Bank Management and Technical Staff announced a seemingly different strategy for the bank by stating that the British bank intended to maintain the Private banking, Corporate banking and BarclayCard services in Portugal with the aim to sell the branch network and not to close branches.
The Union says it was assured that "in the event of a sale the management will safeguard the maximum number of jobs."
In recent years, the bank has been slimming down staff and branches but only about 100 workers had left despite the closure of 113 braches between 2012 and 2013.
Portugal’s BIC bank may take on some of the sites. BIC boss Mira Amaral said he has an "interest in some branches of Barclays and of other banks located in places where our bank needs new branches.” Amaral also raises the possibility of keeping on some of the staff but did not sound convincing.
The Jenkins plan from London is to restructure by placing the retail banking operation in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy into a “bad bank” which will eventually sell off £115bn of non-core operations. The original announcement from London was clear but misleading as by saying that 'Barclays is withdrawing from Europe,' Barclays customers and staff assumed that is what Jenkins meant, when in fact the brand is to stay on in specialist market sectors.
