11 November 2005 The investment banking division of Barclays Bank has appointed Philip Freeborn, currently CIO at UBS, as its new managing director and CIO.

Freeborn, who starts his new role in January 2006, replaces Kevin O’Reilly, Barclays Capital’s former CIO who has joined accountancy firm Deloitte.

The joint role of MD and CIO is highly unusual and is indicative of the value Barclays Capital places on IT.

“Philip enjoys a strong reputation for strategic vision coupled with execution skills,” said Rich Ricci, chief operating officer at Barclays Capital.

Freeborn has worked at investment bank UBS for the last 12 years, where he was responsible for thousands of IT workers. Recently, he was responsible for a pioneering project that almost entirely automated the company’s foreign exchange function using a Sun Microsystems cluster.

Barclays Capital has itself been developing automated trading platforms, such as Barclays Automated Realtime Execution (Barx) which supports trading of all asset classes. Barx has helped Barclays gain significant ground in the interest-rate swaps market.

Freeborn’s appointment is the latest in Barclays Capital’s drive to attract experienced and innovative personnel to support its e-commerce initiative. In August 2005, the bank welcomed Chris Biscoe, former head of electronic trading and client connectivity for Credit Suisse in the Asia-Pacific region, as its head of US e-commerce.