Barclays PLC, British banking and trust firm registered July 20, 1896, under the name Barclay & Co. Ltd. and assuming the name Barclays Bank Ltd. in 1917. It was converted into a public limited company in 1981. The largest commercial banking concern in the United Kingdom, Barclays Bank operates about 5,000 offices in England and Wales and overseas and has several subsidiaries in Britain and other countries. The group’s overseas business is managed by Barclay Bank International Ltd., which has some 2,000 offices in over 70 countries. The firm’s headquarters are in London.
The bank, as created in 1896, merged the banking business of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom, Bouverie & Co., Gurney & Co., and various other private banking concerns. Over the years it took over several other banks, mostly in Britain but also in Commonwealth nations, continental Europe, and other areas. In 1979 Barclays purchased American Credit Corporation and changed the name of that institution to Barclays American Corporation. Through this subsidiary, the bank embarked on a program of significant expansion in the United States in the early 1980s, purchasing numerous consumer finance companies and trust company operations.
Barclay Bank International Ltd.—called Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) until 1954 and Barclays Bank DCO until 1971—was created in 1925 in the amalgamation of the Colonial Bank, the Anglo Egyptian Bank, and the National Bank of South Africa and became a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays Bank Ltd. in 1971. The Colonial Bank had been founded in 1836 to carry on business in the West Indies and British Guiana (now Guyana) and had been empowered by special acts of 1916–17 to conduct business anywhere in the world. The Anglo Egyptian Bank had been created in 1864 to do business in Alexandria and, later, elsewhere in the Mediterranean, as in Malta. De Nationale Bank der Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (Beperkt) had been incorporated in the Boer republic in 1890 and renamed the National Bank of South Africa Limited in 1902, after British occupation.