The equities build-out at Barclays Capital is proceeding at breakneck speed. Since acquiring Lehman Brothers' US capital markets and investment banking businesses in September last year, BarCap has added a total of 460 people in Europe and Asia, with plans to add at least another 300 before the end of the year. At the beginning of 2009 BarCap did not cover any EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) stocks; it now covers 130 and says that it will cover 400 by the end of the year. A few months after the Lehman deal, the acquisition of Bear Wagner from JPMorgan established BarCap as the biggest trader on the New York Stock Exchange.
Some see the return to equities as a startling U-turn for a bank famously rebuilt as a debt-focused house following the demise of Barclays de Zoete Wedd and the sale of its equities and merger and acquisition business more than a decade ago. For BarCap's senior management, however, the exit from equities was always a pragmatic response to a failing business, not the philosophical rejection of an asset class. The question was always: how and when to re-enter?
