Matthew Barrett

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Matthew William Barrett (born September 20, 1944) is an Irish/Canadian banker who until recently was the Chairman of Barclays Bank.

Born in County Kerry, Ireland, he attended the Christian Brothers School in Kells, County Meath, and attended the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Programme in 1981.

He started his banking career in the London office of the Bank of Montreal (BMO) in 1962, and moved from London to Canada in 1967. In 1976 he left BMO for a 9-month period when he joined the Royal Bank of Canada, but returned to the Bank of Montreal after this brief period. By 1987 he had become President and Chief Operating Officer. In 1990 he was elected Chairman of the Bank of Montreal, where he worked for more than 30 years.

He returned to Britain on joining Barclays on 1 October 1999 as Group Chief Executive. (The move followed a proposed merger of the Bank of Montreal with the Royal Bank of Canada being turned down by the competition authorities: "I'd be fibbing if I said that it was not a blow at the time.") He is widely credited with giving Barclays greater confidence and more of a sense of direction, after several years of management mishaps. He then became Chairman of Barclays, in 2004, and retired on 31 December 2006, succeeded by Marcus Agius.

Barrett is twice divorced (married Irene Korsak c. 1967, divorced 1995; married Anne-Marie Sten, 1997), with four children from his first marriage. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1994, and has dual Irish and Canadian citizenship.