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Our Wealth Management business put in place
a far-reaching transformation programme to
serve this expanding market in the future. It
already serves over one million clients, over half
outside the UK, and manages £74 billion of assets
on their behalf. For the second consecutive year,
Barclays was voted the top European brand
amongst banks in a Time Fortune survey of
2,600 affluent customers. In 2000, significant
investment went into building a leading edge
multi-channel distribution platform, which
will offer customers seamless service across
electronic and physical channels with real-time
information update.
In Barclaycard, investment in information-based
customer management increased our market
share across most areas, including interest
earning balances and number of cards. It
launched a range of new tailored card packages
and is growing rapidly in Europe, with over
1.2 million cards issued, 11% of the total.
In Corporate Banking, our investment in mobile
working technology means we can bring the full
resources of Barclays to our business customers
directly. We are also developing a full range
of new customer propositions, for example,
Barclays B2B.com offers a range of internet based
services which will over time change the way
that UK businesses trade with one another.
Barclays Capital, extended its presence and
expanded its market share of capital raising for
customers in the loan and bond markets outside
the US by 41%, one of the fastest rates of organic
growth of any of the top banks. It now has both
the people and the technology to compete
with the best.
Barclays Global Investors is developing new
marketplaces and customer segments. It
extended its franchise into the retail market
through the successful launch of iShares, which
have already attracted £8 billion in funds.
Across all our businesses, the adoption of
stretching value-based goals and embedding
them at every level of the organisation has
been critical to accelerating the pace of
transformation. We are becoming ever more
innovative and customer-focused.
Refining our Portfolio
We have also made progress in refining our
Group portfolio. In each instance, we have
adopted strategies that are best suited to
meeting our business objectives while ensuring
maximum value creation. We are concentrating
on the parts of the value chain where we have a
leading competence while developing new ways
of accessing expertise and scale where no such
advantage currently exists. With The Woolwich,
we bought a business that brings new customers,
high quality distribution, as well as a strong
position in mortgages, a key point in the financial
lives of many customers. Our strategic alliance
with Legal & General meets our objectives
in a different way, providing customers with
high quality choices through a value-maximising
alliance of two organisations pooling their
strengths. We also created value for shareholders
through the profitable sale of Dial – the contract
hire and fleet management business, which was
not core to our future.
We will maintain the same, open-minded
attitude to our portfolio going forward, seeking
to find the right solution to each opportunity
or challenge, not the fashionable one.
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