The bank has appointed Anne Marie Darling, who ran Goldman Sachs’ Marquee trading analytics platform for institutional clients, as co-chief operating officer and Barclays Execution Services (BX) co-chief executive officer alongside Craig Bright.
The pair are based in London, and take on the role following a two-month transition process. They replace Alistair Currie, who has been group chief operating officer since 2023 and with Barclays since 2017.
BX is Barclays’ service provision unit for the company’s UK and international operations, with a focus on increasing efficiency and scaling the business. It has previously been involved in developing electronic trading capabilities within the equities division.
In the first three months of 2025, equity trading revenues were up 59% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and just 9% year-on-year (YoY) to €1.1 billion at the bank. A further €2 billion was reported in fixed income trading, making for a more drastic 82% QoQ and 21% YoY increase.
The bulk of Darling’s more than 30-year career has been spent at Goldman Sachs. She was most recently a partner at the firm, before which she was managing director and vice president.
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Bright has been promoted from chief information officer, a role he has held since 2020. Prior to this, he was group chief information officer for Westpac bank in Australia and spent seven years at Citi in New York, first as managing director of global consumer infrastructure and head of North America before becoming chief technology officer for global consumer banking in 2016. He has more than three decades of industry experience.
Venkatakrishnan noted, “Craig and Anne Marie each have a vast and rich professional experience and complement each other well. We will benefit from their collaborative leadership.”
Via LinkedIn, Currie commented, “They will be outstanding in their new roles and will continue to drive new capabilities across the bank – underpinning customer experience, productivity, resilience, operating control, digital, data and AI capabilities and much more.”
