Leaders List interview: 60 seconds with James Penny

Date: 17 Jan 2024

Ashleigh John

This week’s 60-second piece is dedicated to James Penny, Managing Director at Barclays Private Bank.

Tell Citywealth readers a bit about your role.

I run the UK International Private banking Business for Barclays. We cover clients from Asia, India, Africa, Brazil and the Middle East within my team, who are largely based in the UK, but we do also have an on the ground presence in many of these locations.

What does a typical day look like for you?

My days tend to start very early, that much is typical, however, after that, genuinely no day is the same. I travel frequently internationally and when I travel that time will be entirely client focused. When I am in London, I will have a combination of client meetings, meetings with my team and Internal meetings. Client entertainment a few times a week is normal so each working week seems to pass in about 60 seconds!

Tell us about some recent, interesting client instructions.

One that springs to mind is a very large restructure for an international family. It involves us lending them a significant amount of money which enables them to rearrange a very complex multijurisdictional historic structure into something which is more fit for purpose. It is challenging from a lending perspective and also a legal perspective given the number of entities in different jurisdictions and family members dotted all over the world. Having a global reach through our offices in strategically important wealth hubs means we’re able to support clients regardless of where they, their businesses or families are in the world.

What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?

Higher interest rates have presented our clients with two key challenges. For borrowers, the challenges are how best to structure their long term debt, retain liquidity and whether insurance products now serve better for IHT planning on UK Property purchases. For investors, the challenge is how best to lock in attractive bond yields and still deliver growth above inflation. Our job is to help them review and refine their strategic asset allocations accordingly.

What is your proudest professional achievement?

Having spent such a long time in the industry, I have been fortunate enough to have achieved many of the things I set out to at the beginning of my career. Nowadays I get my proudest professional moments vicariously through people in my team being successful and knowing I have had some small part in helping them.

What do you consider to be the most important attributes for a leader?

I think that two attributes are key here. Firstly, great communication is so important, whether or not you are delivering good or bad news, it’s exactly the same as dealing with clients. The second attribute is accessibility. This is a dynamic industry and decisions, and advice, are needed quickly sometimes.

Who do you most admire and why?

The person I admire the most is somebody I worked with outside of our Profession when I was governor in a local school. This person was the headteacher and I suppose you would call her a “Super-Head” as she moved around troubled schools in socially deprived areas of London delivering fantastic solutions and amazing leadership in difficult circumstances. She genuinely did not possess a single ounce of bias and I admired that greatly.

Where was the last place you travelled to for work or pleasure?

I have just got back from a very quick visit to Australia, eight days in all to attend a wedding. But in the few weeks before that I was in India, Africa and the Middle East on Business.

If you weren’t in this industry, what else might you be doing?

If I wasn’t in this industry, I would have liked to have worked for one of the big music labels, I love music of pretty much all genres.

How do you relax after a long day?

It will always be listening to some music, whatever is appropriate for my mood.

You can view James’s profile on the Leaders List here.