Barclays Names Card Unit CEO -- WSJ

By AnnaMaria Andriotis 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (August 11, 2017).

Barclays PLC's international credit card unit is getting a new chief executive.

Barclaycard International has hired longtime card industry executive Barry Rodrigues to run its operations, a position that he is expected to take over in November, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Rodrigues joins from Citigroup Inc., where he was the head of digital payments in the global consumer bank, in charge of new payment solutions and the team that manages the bank's partnerships with PayPal and Apple and its relationship with Mastercard.

He will replace Amer Sajed, who retired in July. Mr. Sajed became interim CEO in May 2015 and took on the role permanently in April 2016. Barclaycard announced his retirement in March, at the time saying the bank would look at internal and external candidates for Mr. Sajed's replacement.

Under Barclaycard International, Mr. Rodrigues will be in charge of U.S. credit cards and retail online deposits as well as business solutions and payment acceptance in the U.K. He will also oversee the company's credit card and unsecured lending in Germany.

The move takes Mr. Rodrigues to a smaller but growing lender in the U.S. Barclaycard was the ninth largest credit card lender in the U.S. based on purchase volume and balances at the end of last year, according to trade publication the Nilson Report. Its outstanding balances for general-purpose and co-branded cards totaled around $26.4 billion at the end of last year, up from about $6.5 billion in 2007 when the bank's ranking by this measure was 14th. Citi has remained among the top five U.S. credit card lenders during this period.

Mr. Rodrigues spent more than two decades at American Express before joining Citi in 2011. He followed Jud Linville, also a longtime AmEx executive, who joined Citi in 2010 and is the bank's chief executive of cards.

Barclaycard is most well known in the U.S. for its co-branded cards. The bank said in July that it will be the issuer of a new Uber credit card that is set to roll out later this year. It is also the issuer of the JetBlue credit cards, an account that was previously with American Express. Barclaycard is also one of the issuers for the American Airlines co-branded credit card program that it shares with Citi.

Mr. Rodrigues will be based in New York and will report to Tim Throsby, Barclays International president.

Write to AnnaMaria Andriotis at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 11, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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