Maybe Barclays should have kept Marco Valla instead of hiring Cathal Deasy?

Where is Cathal Deasy? Seemingly still at Barclays in New York City, where he co-heads investment banking with Taylor Wright. Where will Cathal Deasy be this time next year? We don't know for sure, but the Financial Times suggested last week that both he and Wright might be on their way out following the recruitment of Mike Joo from Bank of America to run the business instead. 

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Deasy didn't respond to a request to comment for this article, but now that he might on the way out, it's worth recalling the circumstances of his arrival at Barclays in March 2023. 

Deasy and Wright were appointed as co-heads of investment banking at Barclays upon Deasy's arrival, and replaced JK Astier and John Miller. Astier, a financial sponsors banker, spent 17 years at the British bank after joining from Lehman in 2008 and was extremely popular there, particularly with other people who'd joined from Lehman. 

Deasy joined Barclays from Credit Suisse, where he'd been head of investment banking and capital markets for six months. Wright was already at Barclays when Deasy arrived, having joined from Morgan Stanley in 2019. 

Deasy's arrival in New York in March 2023 immediately ruffled feathers with the ex-Lehman bankers who held much of the power in Barclays' investment bank. The Financial Times noted at the time that much of Deasy's career had been based in London, and yet he was now running bankers in New York. He had limited experience of running a large investment bank, and some US bankers complained that they couldn't understand his Irish accent. "We're Americans and he's English. He's also just not very experienced - he'd only just been promoted at Credit Suisse and has no idea about the US market. He's arrived and is trying to tell the American bankers what to do," one senior Barclays banker told us at the time.

Barclays' US bankers had another man in mind to lead them. If they couldn't have JK Astier, they wanted Marco Valla, who'd spent 14 years at Barclays and had also previously worked for Lehman Brothers. 

When Deasy got the job instead of Valla, Valla left for UBS where he has been head of global banking since September 2025. It wasn't long before at least 24 Barclays bankers followed him to the Swiss bank. Astier then retired from Barclays and Miller went to Jefferies along with others, where he's been global head of investment banking and capital markets since September 2023.

Faced with the loss of what the FT says was almost 40% of its US M&A MDs, Barclays was compelled to hire itself some new ones. They didn't all stick around. Healthcare banker Jon Swope, for example, arrived in October 2023 and left again for Morgan Stanley in May 2025. Another healthcare banker, Thomas Drake, arrived from Credit Suisse and left after 15 months for Wells Fargo.

As Barclays attempted to shore up its ranks under Deasy, there were rumours of hefty guaranteed bonuses, both for all the new hires and to prevent even more existing Barclays people from leaving. These guarantees were necessary because the massive departure of M&A MDs following Deasy's arrival was also partly the result of a 40% pay cut for Barclays managing directors in 2022, when the Wall Street Journal reported that Barclays also reneged on verbal bonus guarantees for some senior staff. At the time, the Wall Street Journal attributed both Deasy's appointment and the bonus disappointment to Paul Compton, an operations guy and arch-cost cutter who was then sole head of the investment bank and who seemingly had full rein over pay and hiring decisions while Barclays' CEO CS Venkatakrishnan was being treated for cancer. 

Compton stepped down from that job in early 2024. Deasy and Wright had to patch up the mess of his apparent making and were thought to have spent heavily in the process. Dealogic says Barclays had a 4.5% share of US investment banking revenues in 2020, before the apple cart was upset, falling to 3.4% in 2023. So far this year, it's up marginally to 3.5%. 

It might be concluded, then, that Barclays would have been better off if it had never hired Deasy and had stuck with Valla instead. However, Valla and the other ex-Lehman bankers he's hired haven't done a great job at improving US M&A market share at UBS. Dealogic says UBS accounted for 2% of US M&A revenues when they arrived in 2023, but only around 1% in the first half of this year. Things are going much better for the Swiss bank in Asia, which is also now under Valla's purview.

As they ponder what will become of their jobs when Joo arrives, Deasy and Wright can at least feel good about 2026, given that Barclays has clawed back a small amount of market share. They can also feel good about the fact that they've achieved Barclays' principal aim, which is to deploy its capital very wisely. Under their management, the capital productivity of the investment bank (defined as income over risk weighted assets) has increased from 4.1% to 6.1%. Yay. 

Barclays declined to comment.
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