Barclays PLC of Great Britain is merging its U.S. and foreign asset management operations and will headquarter the new unit in San Francisco.
The new Barclays Global Investors combines the former BZW Investment Management division, which operated abroad, with BZW Barclays Global Investors, which operated primarily in California.
Plans call for the new division, with $350 billion under management, to adopt the California unit's active-investment strategy, said Patricia Dunn, one of two chief executives of the new group.
The California unit is the former Wells Fargo Nikko Investment Advisors, which Barclays bought in June 1995.
Ms. Dunn, who came to Barclays through that deal, said Barclays had not originally planned to combine the Wells unit with its other asset management operations. "But a few months into the new ownership, the benefits of integration were realized and we decided to move ahead on it," she said.
By combining the units, she said, Barclays hopes to take advantage of economies of scale, market itself under one name, and switch to a single investment management strategy. The division will have 1,300 clients, mostly institutional, in 22 countries.
But though Barclays has a strong brand identity in Europe, it has little presence in the United States, said Malcolm Hughes, chief executive of Proudfoot PLC, a London-based management consulting firm.
"Barclays has a strong orientation toward building a global business, and this might help them create a stronger presence in the U.S.," Mr. Hughes said.
In building its global presence, Barclays might have been competing with itself in the eyes of prospective institutional clients with the two divisions operating in the same markets, Mr. Hughes said.
Before the divisions were combined, BZW Investment Management managed assets in a traditional style, Ms. Dunn said, taking local economies and implications into consideration.
BZW Investment Management operated in London, Australia, Hong Kong, and Japan. In foreign cities, BZW Investment Management offices will be merged with BZW Global Investors offices. About 11 staff members will be laid off, Ms. Dunn said, but no jobs will be lost in California.
Lindsay Tomlinson is the London-based co-chief executive of the division. Both Mr. Tomlinson and Ms. Dunn report to Fred Grauer, chairman of the Global Investors division.
Global Investors is part of Barclays PLC's Asset Management Group, formerly BZW Asset Management. The Asset Management Group also includes BarclayTrust and BZW Property Investment Management.
