BARCLAYS PLC LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays Plc (>> Barclays PLC) said Gerry Grimstone, one of the most prominent figures in Britain's financial services industry, will become its deputy chairman at the start of next year.
Grimstone, chairman of insurer Standard Life (>> Standard Life Plc), will become a Barclays non-executive director and its senior independent director and deputy chairman from Jan. 1, replacing Michael Rake, the bank said on Monday.
Standard Life said Grimstone will continue as its chairman, a position he has held since May 2007. "There are no current plans for him to stand down," a Standard Life spokesman said.
Standard Life is the 11th biggest investor in Barclays, with a 1.4 percent holding, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Grimstone is also a board member of accounting firm Deloitte and the lead non‑executive at the Ministry of Defence. He previously spent 13 years with Schroders (>> Schroders plc), where he was vice chairman of its investment bank, and has held other public sector roles, including at HM Treasury.
Rake has been a director at Barclays for eight years and will step down from that role on Dec. 31, Barclays said.
Barclays has been hunting for a new deputy chairman since Rake said in July he would become chairman of Worldpay (>> Worldpay Group PLC), the payments company that listed last month. Regulators were keen for Rake to remain in place as Barclays' deputy chairman while the bank was without a chief executive to prevent Chairman John McFarlane having too much influence.
Rake has been Barclays' deputy chairman since July 2012 and recently oversaw the search for a new CEO and the appointment of Jes Staley to that position.
Grimstone said he was looking forward to supporting McFarlane and Staley to complete "the cultural transformation of Barclays and accelerate the delivery of sustainable shareholder returns."
(Reporting by Steve Slater and Carolyn Cohn, editing by Louise Heavens)
