Barclays – The Business of Banking 1690-1996 may not be everyone’s idea of a page-turner. On the surface it looks as if it might appeal to the select few for whom interim company reports are favoured leisure reading.
There is, though, more to the book, published by Cambridge University Press, than immediately meets the eye.
Although there are parts that some readers might choose to skip (the expanding capital and falling profits section comes to mind), authors Margaret Ackerill and Leslie Hannah make sure there are enough intriguing facts throughout the book to appeal even to those with only a slim knowledge of banking.
The authors track Barclays from its humble Quaker beginnings on 54 Lombard Street in London – an address that has housed five Barclays offices over 300 years – to its period as the world’s largest bank. In the process the reader learns of founder John Freame (a goldsmith), the impact of World War II (over 500 employees were lost) and the complicated process that led to the world’s first ATM, the Barclaycash dispenser.
One of the more interesting sections looks at Barclays’ success in South Africa, and the social issues, such as apartheid, that it has dealt with abroad.
The bank, now second only to HSBC in the UK, has survived three centuries. Frederick Goodenough, Barclays’ chairman between 1917 and1934 “looked upon [Barclays] as a national institution, not as a mere instrument of profit-making”. Investors will be happy present CEO Matthew Barrett thinks differently.
