Barclays card exec quits to fight for U.S. civil liberties

One of Barclays Plc’s most senior U.S. executives is retiring to fight for civil liberties in his adopted homeland amid concerns about the rights of Muslims, immigrants and women.

Amer Sajed, a 56-year-old Pakistan-born immigrant who moved to the U.S. to attend Vassar College and get an MBA at New York University, will step down from his role leading the bank’s credit card business in July. He has been working with the American Civil Liberties Union and other grassroots community organizations after being spurred into action by the acrimonious political climate under President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

Barclays signage
A sign sits outside a Barclays bank, operated by Barclays Plc, in Guildford, U.K., on Monday, July, 27, 2015. Barclays Plc should pick an investment banker as its next chief executive officer because the lender's underperforming securities unit requires further restructuring, Aberdeen Asset Management Plc’s Martin Gilbert said. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

Sajed joined Barclays in 2006 after stints at Citigroup in St. Louis and HSBC Holdings, rising through the ranks to become head of the Barclaycard credit card division and a member of CEO Jes Staley’s executive committee in April last year. Sajed lives in the Philadelphia area and works out of Barclaycard’s offices in Wilmington, Delaware.

“We wish Amer and his family every happiness, and especially in pursuing his passion for the promotion of civil liberties, and contributing to the community where he lives,” Staley said in a statement Wednesday.

The Trump administration’s attempts to ban some Muslim immigrants and silence critical journalists, as well as comments toward women and gender rights, contributed to his decision to leave banking, one of the people said. The ACLU has already brought several legal challenges against Trump’s travel ban and is also fighting the President’s reversal of the Obama administration’s order to phase out federal use of private prisons.

While Trump has stocked his cabinet with Goldman Sachs Group alums and many bankers have cheered his pledges to deregulate and cut taxes, much of Wall Street hasn’t been as welcoming of some of his social policies. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein spoke out against Trump’s controversial attempt to halt immigration from seven Middle Eastern nations in January, while Citigroup’s Mike Corbat said the lender was concerned about the message the order sends.

Sajed was born to a wealthy family in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the U.S. when he was 19 on a one-way plane ticket with $900, he said in an interview with Bloomberg News last year. His first job brought him down to earth, cleaning toilets for a McDonald’s franchise during a summer when he was at Vassar. He only lasted a few days.

“There was a lot of learning there, coming from Pakistan and from a pretty well-off family, to go and clean toilets in McDonald’s,” he said in the interview. “It helped put in perspective that hierarchies are crap and basically what matters is what you do and how well you do it.”

Barclays Chairman John McFarlane has previously described Sajed as Barclays’s “ace” as he and CEO Staley focus on boosting profitability, exiting operations like African banking to expand better-returning businesses like Barclaycard. The bank will look at internal and external options for the future leadership of its international consumer cards and payments business, the London-based bank said in a statement on Wednesday.

Sajed met his wife at Vassar and has four children, according to a profile on the college’s website. He already works on several community organizations in his local area, such as an adviser to the Select Greater Philadelphia Council, which promotes local businesses.

Before joining Barclays in 2006, he worked at Citigroup for two decades in a number of roles including in the credit card division. During his five years in charge of U.S. Barclaycard he doubled the volume of the business, which is now a top-10 credit card company in the country, the profile says.

Since 2006, profit from credit cards has quadrupled, while earnings at the securities unit have fallen by about a quarter. Barclaycard had the highest profitability of any of the bank’s businesses in 2015. Last year, the company stopped reporting it as one unit as it split U.K. and international divisions ahead of Britain’s ringfencing rules.

Bloomberg News
Credit cards Policymaking Consumer banking Donald Trump Barclays Citigroup Goldman Sachs
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