Barclays

New hire to drive significant growth plans for UK & Ireland Private Bank

Barclays Wealth, a leading global wealth manager, today announces the appointment of Christian Berchem as Managing Director, Head of High Net Worth (HNW) for UK & Ireland Private Bank. Based in London, he will join the firm in September and will report to David Semaya, Head of UK & Ireland Private Bank.

With over 20 years experience in the financial services industry, Christian joins from JP Morgan where he worked most recently as Co-Head of European Sales post the acquisition of Cazenove and as Head of European Equity Sales from 2006 to 2010. In this role he led his sales team to increase JP Morgan's client rankings and market share, helping to establish the company as one of the leading equity franchises in Europe. Prior to this he was Co-Head of Equities for Germany at JP Morgan and a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch.

David Semaya commented:

"Christian has an excellent industry reputation and brings with him world-class experience of leading large scale UK businesses. With his proven track record for managing, building and recruiting teams, he will be an outstanding addition to the talent we already have in our HNW business.

"Christian's appointment comes during a period of intense growth for UK & Ireland Private Bank and his leadership will be crucial to enable the smooth rollout in the next phase of our growth plans. As a result of our investment into the business and ambitious banker hiring - this year alone we've appointed over 50 client-facing professionals - the UK business was up 25% in 2010 from the previous year, in terms of net income growth, and continues to grow strongly this year. We continue the build out of the business and Christian will be a strong enabler in this process."

For further information contact:

Clare Milton, Barclays Wealth, Corporate Communications
+44 (0)20 3134 2327

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