Barclays Appoints Wendy Lucas-Bull To Its Board

VENTURES AFRICA – Wendy Lucas-Bull, the chair of the newly-formed Barclays Africa, has been appointed non-executive director of the LSE-listed Barclays Plc and Barclays Bank Plc starting from today.

Steve Meintjes, an analyst at Imara SP Reid, said this showed that Barclays plc was recognising that Barclays Africa was an important part of its global operations.

“So, they have to be up to speed with what is happening in Africa. So they thought someone who knows Africa’s business landscape well like her should be on the board,” Meintjes told Ventures Africa in an interview.

“So I would have been surprised if they did not have her on the board of both Barclays plc and Barclays Bank plc.”

A couple of months ago, Barclays Africa Group made its debut on the JSE, Africa’s biggest bourse.

Barclays Africa, which is among Africa’s major financial services firms, was launched by the combination of Absa Group and Barclays’ African operations on 31 July this year in a R18.2 billion deal.

To mirror the broadened group’s pan-African attention, it was decided that the name of the company should be altered from Absa Group to Barclays Africa Group.

It is 62.3 percent owned by the London-based Barclays Bank, the parent company of Absa, South Africa’s biggest retail bank.

Africa is Barclays’ biggest region of operation after the UK and US. It has added more than 10 percent of Barclays’ interim profit before tax in the six month to June this year.