BARCLAYS PLC

BARCLAYS PLC



BARCLAYS PLC

Introduction

Barclays is a UK-based financial services group engaged primarily in banking, investment banking and investment management. In terms of assets employed, Barclays is one of the largest financial services groups in the UK. It is also a leading provider of coordinated global services to multinational corporations and financial institutions worldwide. Barclays has been involved in banking for over 300 years and operates in over 60 countries with over 74,800 employees. (Dan Keeler 2009, 45-76)

Strengths

For the year 2003, the group achieved a pre-tax profit of £3,845 million. Shareholders' funds were £16.7 billion and the Tier 1 capital ratio was 7.9%. Barclays has seven business grouping: Barclays Africa, Barclaycard, Barclays Capital, Barclays Global Investors, Barclays Private Clients, UK Banking. There aim to create value by building a virtuous circle of satisfied stakeholders. In this they benefit by tackling a changing global market and brand development. However, its control style is a hands-off relationship and has less control over the businesses and its strategy is left to the ExecutivesBarclaycard is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays PLC, set up in 1966 and is the UK leading and first credit card business. It offers a full range of credit cards to customers and can be used to pay for goods and services together with card payment facilities to retailers and other businesses. (Dan Keeler 2009, 45-76)

Barclaycard provides more than 11 million credit cards in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. The business has four divisions:-Barclaycard UK -provides credit cards for 9.7 million customers in the UK-Barclaycard International - provides credit cards in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, African & the Caribbean-Company Barclaycard - provides corporate charge cards to 135,000 businesses.

Barclaycard Merchant Services - provides payment facilities to 131,000 retailers Barclaycard has been a brand in the UK. It was synonymous to the term credit and alsowith VISA which was its first franchisee. It faced earlier threats from MasterCard affiliated Amex cards and Diners club cards which it successfully competed. It also added MasterCard affiliation in due course to reduce the level of competition. And also by using strategy analysis and techniques is to develop the key recommendations and challenges that the organization is facing. Therefore the chosen organization is Barclaycard Product and services where the strategic situation they face is the competition, and the challenge is to overcome and maintain as UK leading and first credit card business. (Dan Keeler 2009, 45-76)

Barclaycards Current Competitive Strategy:It's important to identify Barclaycards current strategy and identify their core competitive strategy, before getting into strategy recommendation analysis. Knowing their current strategy and whether it is the best option or not, would help me identify other strategy they may have missed. Reading through the case, and using the strategy clock as an aid Figure (A) shown below. At the beginning I thought to place it between hybrid and differentiation, but after finding out that they don't compete on price as their interest charges were not the lowest, it came clear to me that Barclaycards competitive strategy ...