Jenkins described the newly merged retail and corporate bank as the new "powerhouse" for Barclays, to shift the focus from the investment bank.
He has certainly bought in some sharp management, with Woolwich's chief executive, John Stewart, taking over as head of both banks' merged retail operations and as the assumed heir-apparent.
Seb James, chief executive of the newly merged retail giant Dixons Carphone, which will join the FTSE 100 later this month, said its UK electricals business had made a strong start to the year with like-for-like sales up 4% in the three months to 31 July.
Spent several hundred million dollars buying distressed Kmart bonds in 2002; merged retail chain with Sears, Roebuck 2 years later.
Little progress has been made since Ruentex Group, the parent company of Rt-Mart in Taiwan, announced last month that it was planning to form a new joint venture with Groupe Auchan to merge retail businesses in mainland China.
This may include a tax on money transfers in payment for imports, a ruse used to get money out of Russia through transfers for goods that do not exist.See article: Fuelling Russia's economyTwo of Germany's top four banks, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, are considering merging their retail businesses to improve performance.
Adam Sharp, global head of news and politics, Twitter 10.40 - 11.25 Panel debate Total retail: the merging of online and offline shopping From Amazon Lockers and eBay pop-up shops to iBeacons and mobile location technology, leading retailers are no longer thinking in binary terms of online or offline shopping as the worlds of virtual and physical shopping collide.
The two held extensive negotiations last year about merging their retail networks, but Dresdner Bank's chief executive, Bernard Walter, broke off the talks in September.
H&R Block Inc., the world's largest tax preparation company, said today that it was merging its retail mortgage operations into one company as it tries to get more customers to use its financial services.
The group said any cuts would be part of efficiency savings from merging its UK retail banking and UK business banking activities, which will fund an extra 1,000 customer-facing staff in the retail business and improvements to systems.
