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18. Barclays

• Head of IT: Don Trotta, CIO
• Industry: Financial services
• Website: www.barclays.com

Barclays is one of the ‘big four’ UK financial services providers, with retail, commercial and investment banking, credit cards and wealth and investment management businesses, serving 30 million customers in over 50 countries.

It’s sheer scale always sees it in the higher ranks of the CIO 100, but the end of last year was overshadowed for Barclays by walking away from its bid to acquire ABN AMRO when a consortium of banks led by Royal Bank of Scotland came up with a higher, cash-based offer.

Even Barclays Group chairman, Marcus Agius stated in his review that “2007 was an eventful year for Barclays and the financial services industry”. But despite having to write off £1.7 billion from Barclays Capital on sub-prime mortgages and buyout loans, the investment banking arm made record profits of £1.9 billion in the first ten months of the year, faring some might say somewhat better than other UK banks in the face a global credit crunch. And it most recently said group profit before tax early in 2008 was broadly in line with the monthly run rate for 2007 that produced a one per cent fall overall, but where profit before business disposals rose 3 per cent.

Barclays said its overall reported fraud losses fell in 2007, with most of the reduction coming from significant falls in internet banking fraud. As part of its efforts to enhance security, Barclays offered all its personal customers complimentary internet security software to reduce phishing attacks. The Group also rolled out two-factor authentication technology using the new PINsentry device to make online transactions more secure. And enhanced transaction profiling has further improved the bank’s ability to identify where fraudsters have targeted customer accounts.

Security was again the focus for technology investment in May this year, when Barclays also adopted encryption management software to safeguard sensitive customer and corporate information across the organisation’s global operations.

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