LEADING an organisation with a 90,000-strong workforce processing millions of customer transactions worldwide daily is an enormous job. And driving growth and delivering profit in a challenging business environment demands relentless efforts.
Barclays Group CEO Coimbatore Sundararajan Venkatakrishnan has a further challenge.
He has been in the thick of its decision-making process even while undergoing treatment for blood cancer.
Venkatakrishnan, more popularly known as Venkat, has been the chief executive of the UK’s fourth-largest banking and financial services group since November 2021.
Previously, the Indian American executive was Barclays Bank’s head of global markets and co-president from October 2020. He was the group’s chief risk officer from 2016 to 2020.
Born in the south Indian city of Mysuru, Karnataka in 1966, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained his bachelor's, masters and PhD degrees.
In 1994, he joined the American banking giant JP Morgan Chase where he held senior positions in investment banking and asset management.
Venkat went on to become its chief investment officer for global fixed income, managing assets worth $200 billion.
He rose constantly during his 22-year stint at JP Morgan and continued his upward career trajectory into Barclays.
While the London-headquartered group reports good earnings, it has not been investors’ favourite on the bourse as the stock has been under-performing its British banking peers. Analysts point to the volatility generally associated with the investment banking business which forms a significant part of Barclay’s bottom line.
But going by media reports, Venkat is determined to address the nagging investor scepticism about the business vertical. They said he mined data for months showing the investment banking division’s earnings disproved the perception of volatility.
Even as he racks his brain about the group’s growth, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November last year, when the blood cancer was in an early stage.
Venkat said he discovered “life lessons” while undergoing treatment during which he continued to be actively engaged in managing Barclays - although it meant he could not drop by the bank’s branches or visit regional locations.
In a February article published in the Financial Times, he revealed his experience during his recovery process at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Venkat said he was surprised by a “significant minority” of the messages of support he received that questioned his choice to work during the treatment.
“They wondered whether this was a form of privilege, with my role affording me a flexibility denied to many others,” the CEO said.
“Some even asked if it was CEO swagger or, worse, ‘negative virtue signalling’, implying that it was wrong for others to take complete medical leave to heal themselves,” he wrote, saying “(you should) be prepared to explain your choices.”
Venkat clarified it was his own decision to work while receiving treatment and he would never expect others to do the same if they were unwilling or unable.
He said he missed chatting with colleagues in cafeterias, lobbies and lifts and joining client meetings.
“I always knew I would miss the constant contact and sought to remain accessible and responsive on email, and I never stopped calling colleagues and clients,” he said.
“All this may not have been necessary, but I enjoyed it: it is important not just to do what you need, but also what you like,” the 57-year-old executive said.
Barclays did not do much on the London Stock Exchange in the past couple of years, but Venkat said the operating performance of the group was ‘strong’ amid an uncertain business environment.
“In 2022, we witnessed the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, a resulting energy security crisis, a sustained rise in interest rates across the developed world, political uncertainty in the UK with associated movement in gilt yields and in sterling, and the first re-alignment of global geopolitical lines since the end of the Cold War… We have demonstrated our continued financial resilience, notwithstanding the unusual events of the year. We created broad-based income growth even as we continued to take a cautious approach to the macro environment,” he wrote in Barclays’ most recent annual report.
“Our strong operating performance in 2022 has been powered across all our businesses - they have individually generated strong returns in an uncertain operating environment, and they fit well together. We played an important role in delivering value for our stakeholders, and in helping them overcome the challenges they faced this year… We see a clear opportunity for financial services to contribute new approaches to address complex issues including energy independence and efficiency, housing and economic growth”.
Venkat, who likes yoga and watching TV, is also a board member of the Institute of International Finance, an advisory member to the Board of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Golub Centre for Finance and Policy and a member of the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative Leadership Council.
