(Bloomberg) -- Every few months the most senior traders and salespeople at Barclays Plc head to a one-hour meeting with their boss Adeel Khan. He wants to dissect how individual traders are performing, if and why desks are lagging Wall Street peers and any rosy assumptions his team are making.
Khan is steering Barclays' trading business through one of the trickiest balancing acts in the industry. That's to deliver growth within the confines of capital limits imposed by Chief Executive Officer CS Venkatakrishnan, who in 2024 laid out a strategy that increases the focus on other units, such as retail banking and wealth.
The global markets unit contributed over a third of the bank's revenue in the first quarter, underlining how the business underpins Barclays' global ambitions. Barclays traders are expected to reel in £2.51 billion ($3.34 billion) for the quarter when it reports results on Tuesday, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
But its Wall Street rivals remain a tough comparison, as American investment banks trampled earnings records in a second quarter fueled by volatility. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. each generated about $12 billion from trading during the period. French bank BNP Paribas SA said Thursday its equity traders reeled in 43% more revenue than a year earlier, an indication Europe is also reaping benefits of a second-quarter stock rally, though results did little to lift the bank's shares.
Barclays' markets division has grown at a slower rate than some US and European peers, with revenue rising at an annualized rate of about 6.2% from 2023 as the bank refocused the unit through last year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on reporting currencies.
"It's difficult because the big US banks have incumbent scale," Shore Capital analyst Gary Greenwood said. "The only way you will push against them is if you acquire something else that takes them a step above, and that's unlikely."
While some investors welcome the diversification offered by global markets, and the overall investment bank, others have shown frustration over the years at Barclays' structure as a mid-sized consumer lender tied to a global trading machine, underpinned by Lehman Brothers assets the group acquired for a bargain price during the financial crisis.
"If it was Premier League it wouldn't be one of the big five. It would be a Brighton and Hove," Greenwood said of the markets business, referring to the UK football team that ended the 2025 to 2026 season in eighth.
This story is based on interviews with more than 40 people familiar with Khan and his business. Most asked to not be identified so they could speak candidly about internal matters. Khan, who is based in London, has never given a media interview and declined to speak for this story. A representative for Barclays declined to comment.
James Goldstone, a portfolio manager at Invesco Asset Management Ltd., which invests in Barclays, said the leaders of the investment bank "deserve an enormous amount of credit for the turnaround" over the past decade. Other investment bank heads include Cathal Deasy and Taylor Wright, who together run the unit that advises corporate clients on mergers and capital raising.
"There have been some really big tests and it's proved to be very resilient and countercyclical," he said. "It has been achieved by doing more with less."
The investment bank has faced setbacks in recent months, including the collapse of UK-based Market Financial Solutions Ltd. and Tricolor Holdings, which forced Barclays to recognize impairments of more than £300 million and pull back from certain other asset-based lending. The fallout grabbed attention of top leadership: During a town hall in New York this June, Khan told staff to speak up if they spotted anything amiss.
At his regular business review meetings, Khan's rigor makes some nervous. Several recall feelings of fear and paranoia about not being able to respond to his questions about performance. Others say they thrive.
Building Loyalty
After managing the credit hedge fund at BlueBay Asset Management, Pakistan-born Khan joined Barclays in 2008, around the time the lender was acquiring the North American business of Lehman Brothers. That deal would transform the British firm's markets unit, then called Barclays Capital, into a Wall Street contender, with a big presence in fixed income and equities trading.
For Khan, though, his pivotal moment came a few years later during the euro-zone debt crisis. Taking credit default swap positions on sovereigns and banks in poorer parts of Europe, he made the bank close to $100 million some years as the crisis unfolded.
He so impressed bosses that by 2012 he was running European credit trading. Two years later, while then-CEO Antony Jenkins was paring back the investment bank, he became global head of credit trading.
Those close to him say he's unflappable, charismatic and a consummate networker. Outside work, he'd hold court at Canary Wharf watering holes such as Boisdale. For several summers, most recently around a decade ago, he would gather colleagues at an apartment in Monaco belonging to his mother-in-law that overlooks the Grand Prix course, serving wine and lasagna.
From late 2021, Khan co-ran the markets business with Stephen Dainton, who some say was a more consensus-based manager. In February 2024, Venkatakrishnan moved Dainton to become head of investment bank management, with Khan, one of the bank's highest-paid employees, taking sole control of global markets. In April, Dainton was moved to the role of chief client officer, and this month said he would retire from Barclays.
Now, the challenge in the markets business is to get traders to take on more risk. Speaking on an internal podcast earlier this year, Khan said equities had been "on absolute fire" but investing was getting harder for everyone. "Think about manufacturing firms using AI for supply chain optimization or banks for fraud detection," he recommended.
Khan has spent several years building a group of loyal staffers around him. These include Hossein Zaimi in macro, Ronnie Wexler and Scott McDavid in equities, Chetan Vohra in securitized products and Jean-Francois Mastrangelo running Asia-Pacific markets. Other key players include Tunc Buyuksolak, one of Wall Street's biggest traders in Turkish assets, who in a good year brings in around $100 million for the bank.
Kamal Sandhu, a senior credit trader now at Point72 Asset Management, made $120 million for Barclays in 2022, according to a court filing. When Sandhu was planning to leave in 2023, Khan offered to speak to hedge fund Millennium Management about a role. "Just want you to be happy and here to support you," he later wrote.
He has also been a regular figure on the charity circuit. On one occasion he bid over £1,000 for a signed cricket bat, and he would splash out tens of thousands of pounds for wine or, about 15 years ago, for dinner with a senior executive at BlackRock Inc.
Yet he has a tough streak. Earlier in his career, he was known for fiery outbursts and he could combine charm with intimidation. He doesn't linger when it comes to firing underperformers, according to people familiar with his leadership.
Some of Khan's fans internally and externally would like to see him succeed Venkatakrishnan when he eventually steps down. He's recently held discussions on expanding the markets business into other asset classes or regions, but hasn't yet made any major moves, any of which would likely require additional capital.
Playing Catch-Up
Barclays' trading revenue still remains far behind Wall Street peers. Bank of America Corp. reported almost double the trading revenue that Barclays did last year. But the bank has broader operations than its European rivals, a win for some analysts and investors.
"What Barclays markets division has going for it is it's the only European player with a successful fixed-income and equities business," said Kian Abouhossein, co-head of global bank research at JPMorgan. "They clearly have that diversification to help them, which UBS and Deutsche Bank don't."
Barclays has determined it wants to gain market share in trading securitized products, European rates and equity derivatives, setting those priorities in 2024. Traders are under pressure to get the firm into the top five ranking for 70 of its top-rated clients this year. For now, they are at 65, meaning for those clients they have dislodged one of the five main Wall Street banks. Some investors and analysts have pressed the bank for more details about the markets business, and where it can grow.
Trading is still the main driver at Barclays' markets unit, yet it's been moving toward more stable forms of income such as fixed-income financing and prime brokerage, or lending to hedge funds. Khan himself has fans among the top ranks of Millennium and market-maker Citadel Securities. In the first three months of 2026, client financing made up more than a third of the global markets business revenue.
Invesco's Goldstone questioned how the investment bank will deliver on its "potential" while keeping assets flat, at the same time as capital rules are eased for US banks.
"I don't have an answer for that but I'm a big fan of very strict capital allocation," he said. "It really forces management to focus on the most attractive activities."
--With assistance from Dinesh Nair, Quentin Webb, Sinead Cruise, Laura Benitez, Nabila Ahmed and Jeff Kao.
(Updates to add detail on Khan's work at BlueBay Asset Management in paragraph 14.)
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