Barclays Hires Akshaya Bhargava to Head Wealth Management Unit

(Bloomberg) -- Barclays hired Akshaya Bhargava as chief executive officer of its wealth and investment management business to replace Peter Horrell, who stepped down.

Bhargava will start on Oct. 13 and most recently ran InfraHedge, a company he created in 2010 and sold to State Street last year, London-based Barclays said in a statement today. He began his career at Citigroup in India and worked for the company for 22 years.

Barclays incorporated its wealth division into its consumer bank in May as part of CEO Antony Jenkins’s plan to refocus the lender on the U.K., reduce costs and curtail risky investment- banking activities. The U.K.’s second-largest lender is shrinking the wealth division and plans to exit more than 100 countries amid regulatory scrutiny of banks’ compliance with anti-money laundering laws. It sold its banking operations in Spain, including the wealth and investment management business, to CaixaBank SA this month.

“The wealth management industry is evolving and clients’ needs are changing,” Ashok Vaswani, CEO of Barclays’s consumer and business banking, said in the statement. “A leader who can drive success through transformational times and harness new technologies to enhance the client experience will help to position Barclays at the forefront of this industry revolution.”

In June, the bank said Horrell would step down at the end of the year. The Financial Times reported the hiring of Bhargava earlier Monday.

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