it’s goodbye barcap in bank’s big rebrand
BARCLAYS has never been afraid to shake things up when it comes to branding, regularly changing its logo since the famous Spread Eagle was first adopted back in the 18th century.
But now the bank has left itself with nowhere left to go, after saying yesterday it has brought all of its operations under one single brand.
The rebrand, which Bob Diamond’s mouthpieces say will mean it can “better serve our clients by bringing them the best of Barclays, from across the entire organisation”, will see separate banking divisions – Barclays Capital, Corporate and Wealth – scrapped in favour of a single operation run under the Barclays umbrella.
The change means that after 15 years it is farewell to BarCap – the best known of the three divisions and the place where current CEO Bob Diamond (pictured, inset) cut his teeth, heading up the investment bank for more than a decade before taking the top spot last year.
But the famed blue eagle logo will remain – having already gone through several versions since it first graced the bank’s 54 Lombard Street in the 1730s. The eagle was officially incorporated as a Grant of Arms in the 1930s, and has appeared on the bank’s annual reports and accounts since 1948.
It was modified several more times until the latest incarnation was introduced in 2004 – having turned “Barclays blue” at some point during the 1960s – and has even managed to survive a brief hiccup in 2007 when the eagle was accused of having Nazi overtones, prompting the depluming of a 14ft-wide aluminium version of the eagle that sat atop Barclays House in Poole.