Julian Chillingworth - Chief Investment Officer, Rathbone Brothers Plc
Barclays may be forced to cut costs if the lender is to achieve its future profitability target.
That is according to Julian Chillingworth, fund manager at Rathbone Brothers, who has told Bloomberg the major financier is likely to have to take action sooner rather than later in order to meet this objective.
Bob Diamond - chief executive of Barclays, the only UK consumer bank not to have postponed such targets during the eurozone crisis - set a goal of a 13 per cent return on equity for 2013 one year ago.
Mr Diamond - who, the Daily Telegraph has reported, will receive a £2.5 million ($3.9 million) bonus of 2011 - has not seen fit to change this despite the deterioration of the situation on the continent.
However, Mr Chillingworth believes this to be unrealistic and insisted the chief executive will have to "wriggle out" of this stated ambition through either scrapping it, making redundancies or selling assets.
By Tony Aynsley
