Barclays boss CS Venkatakrishnan is a brave chap. It is a long time since a High Street bank bought anything in the United States.

Admittedly, Barclays is different to its competitors. Thanks to former chief executive Bob Diamond, it has a significant presence on Wall Street having snapped up the American remains of Lehman in the great financial crisis (GFC).

The decision to splash $800million (£597million) on US online consumer lender Best Egg may look like a shot in the dark. 

However, it is not an unknown quantity.

The company and its predecessor Marlette Funding were founded by Jeff Meiler, who worked at Barclaycard in Britain and then in Wilmington, Delaware, from 2002 to 2010. 

Meiler left Best Egg in 2023, but there is a smattering of former Barclays executives in place, including the president Bobby Ritterbeck and chief executive Paul Ricci.

It is good to see a British bank making a foray into the US after the bashing taken in the GFC. 

RBS’s (now NatWest) adventures in retail banking through Citizens and its Greenwich-based sub-prime mortgage unit were a disaster for investors, colleagues and the British taxpayer. 

HSBC suffered greatly from its catastrophic investment in consumer finance group Household and US sub-prime. 

Barclays’ balance sheet was stuffed with sub-prime derivatives leading the bank into a contentious rescue by Gulf potentates.

Best Egg has rapidly built up $40billion of funding and its website is filled with tempting offers to take out all manner of consumer loans. 

Nevertheless, some Barclays shareholders may gulp at the suggestion that the platform could be an ‘origination engine’ for debts which could be pooled together to create asset backed securities. That will ignite unhappy memories.

By dipping its toes into the vast US consumer market, Barclays is replicating recent American expansion in Britain. 

JP Morgan Chase has been directly recruiting British consumers through a Chase platform to which it recently added online fintech investment pioneer Nutmeg.

Online financial services allow entryism to new markets without the heavy costs of bricks and mortar lenders.

Fund and games

Nelson Peltz’s speciality has been driving transformation at big brand companies such as Britain’s Cadbury and Unilever. 

At the latter, where there have been rapid shifts in leadership and strategy, his intervention can hardly be declared a resounding triumph with the shares stuck in a booming market.

Venture capitalist General Catalyst and Peltz have set their sights on full control of activist fund manager Janus Henderson.

Peltz has already sought new direction, shaking up the board and installing former Alliance Bernstein finance director Ali Dibadj as chief executive.

Peltz claims his intervention has driven a doubling of the share price. Arguably, that hasn’t been that hard in a period when the S&P 500 has done better and other lumbering fund groups, notably BlackRock, can boast a 125 per cent advance.

The merger between Denver fund manager Janus and old-line UK group Henderson in 2017 has not been a roaring success. 

The group suffered seven years of outflows. That recently reversed when Dibadj won a mandate from Guardian Life Insurance to run a $45billion fixed interest portfolio. 

Peltz wants to turn his 20 per cent stake into full ownership with a $7billion buyout offer. 

The plan presumably is to scythe costs using tech and expose Janus Henderson to more whizzy alternate markets.

Going private looks like an end of cycle, heady deal with little upside for anyone.

Late comers

With a month to go to the Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility is making the Chancellor’s task ever more difficult.

Rachel Reeves needs all the help she can muster. Disclosure by Bloomberg that she has added two members to her council of economic advisers ought to be reassuring. But it is all too little too late. 

The addition of yet another Resolution Foundation economist, Emily Fry, can only lead to groupthink in a team headed by its former boss Torsten Bell.

It would be nice to think that Institute for Fiscal Studies import David Shurrock might offer some common sense and avoid the consequences of daft tax changes. 

Don’t hold your breath. Labour dogma rules.