Matthew Barrett (banker)

Matthew William Barrett, OC, LL.D. (born September 20, 1944) is an Irish Canadian banker who until 2006 was the Chairman of Barclays Bank. Barrett serves as an honorary director of BMO Financial Group.^[1]

Life and career

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) as a clerk in 1962, and moved from London to Canada in 1967 when he was promoted to management trainee at bank's main office. 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. In 1987 he had become President and in 1989 he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Bank of Montreal.^[2] In 1990 he was elected Chairman of the Bank of Montreal, where he worked for more than 30 years.^[3]

After serving a short stint as Chairman of Irish state-owned bank ACCBank, he returned to Britain on joining Barclays on 1 October 1999 as Group Chief Executive.^[4] (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 then became Chairman in 2004,^[5] and retired on 31 December 2006, succeeded by Marcus Agius.^[4]

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.

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