LONDON - Barclays said on Wednesday that Hector W. Sants would not return to his post as compliance chief after taking a leave of absence because of exhaustion and stress last month.
Mr. Sants, a former head of Britain’s financial regulator, resigned after concluding that he would not be able to return to work in the near term, Barclays said in a statement.
Barclays also said that its chief operations and technology officer, Shaygan Kheradpir, decided to leave to run a bank based in the United States. Darryl West, Barclays’ chief information officer, will take over from Mr. Kheradpir on an interim basis. Mr. Sants’ responsibilities will be taken on temporarily by Allen Meyer, head of compliance of the corporate and investment banking unit.
The departures are a setback for Barclays chief executive Antony P. Jenkins, who set out to change the bank’s culture and improve compliance after Barclays faces a string of legal issues, including a $450 million fine last year for its role in the manipulation of the benchmark rate, the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.
During his 10 months months at Barclays, Mr. Sants started to review the bank’s risk-taking activities. Mr. Jenkins said in a statement Wednesday that Mr. Sants “made significant progress towards creating a world class compliance function at Barclays and in improving our relationships with regulators and governments.â€
Mr. Sants is not the only senior financial executive in London to take a leave in recent years because of stress. But his resignation stands in contrast to António Horta-Osório, the chief executive of the Lloyds Banking Group, who returned to the bank after a two-month leave at the beginning of 2012.
