In 2007 Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays stood head to head, as they tussled for control of ABN Amro. In the end, RBS won that scrap but Barclays has been winning most battles ever since. In foreign exchange, the two banks have developed very similar global markets franchises; they shared a very similar footprint, spoke to a similar set of clients, and also established themselves as top-five players.
As this year’s FX poll shows, Barclays is now pulling away from RBS and the reason could very well be e-commerce. Barclay’s Barx platform has gathered substantially more support than the RBS platform, RBS Marketplace (RBSM), finishing second in the poll, while RBS fell five places to 10th. RBS has been hampered by the loss of key staff, while continuing uncertainty over remuneration policies became a drag on morale.
Most of those issues have now been resolved, say RBS’s relatively new, and youthful, management team of Mark Barnes and Chris Leuschke.