Barclays Wealth Appoints Gobal HR Director

Stephen Harris

8 February 2007

Barclays Wealth has appointed Philip Smith to the newly-created position of global Human Resources director. Mr Smith's role will be to ensure that Barclays Wealth Human Resources provides advice, assistance and delivery capabilities at both a strategic and operational/tactical level on a global basis. He will report to Frank McGarahan, chief operating officer, Barclays Wealth, and starts immediately. Mr Smith previously held a position on the board of Fortis Investments as chief finance officer and global head of Human Resources. Prior to this, Mr Smith was Human Resources director at both Andersen Business Consulting and Prudential. Mr Smith’s team will encompass 140 HR professionals spanning client teams and specialist functions, including resourcing, compensation, learning and development. Mr Smith told WealthBriefing that the key focus of his role will be navigating the talent aspects of a diverse and fast growing organisation. “This means in essence that we create the right proposition to hire and retain the very best people in the marketplace, internationally, and to a genuine high performance culture in all areas of what we do,” he said. “The short term elements of this will, of course, be the rapid talent hiring programmes we have in place around the world, and in the more medium to longer term ensuring the talent management strategy is working in areas such as learning, high potential development, professional education and our long range resourcing strategies, . Mr McGarahan said: "I am delighted to welcome Phil to Barclays Wealth. The experience he has gained during more than 10 years experience in board level HR management will be vital as our business continues its rapid growth. We have made a commitment to long-term investment in recruiting and developing the best talent in the industry in order to become Europe's leading wealth manager and someone of Phil's calibre in the role of HR Director is essential to support this."