Banking and nothingness

摘要

You wait ages for a European bank to send a clear signal on its future strategy and then it gives two in as many days-saying seemingly opposite things. On October nth the chairman of Barclays hinted its investment-banking unit might be flogged to a rival for want of scale. Investors intrigued by the prospect of a simpler Barclays focused on dull-but-reliable retail banking had but a few hours to ponder the prospect. By the next day reports emerged that the same chairman had plumped for a former J.P. Morgan investment banker, Jes Staley, to be the bank's next boss.