Antony Jenkins, the former Barclays chief executive, is on the verge of a deal with the world’s biggest asset manager that will catapult him into the ranks of Britain’s super-rich.
Sky News has learnt that Mr Jenkins, who was sacked as the British bank’s boss in 2015, is close to selling a stake in 10x Future Technologies, his fintech venture, to BlackRock.
City sources said that 10x could announce the deal, which will value the company at well over £500m, within weeks.
BlackRock’s investment will form part of a £130m funding round, according to an investor briefed on the deal.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, one of the country’s biggest retirement schemes, is also injecting capital as part of the 10x fundraising, they added.
Mr Jenkins is expected to hold a stake of approximately 40% in the company, worth more than £200m, after the fundraising.
The former Barclays chief was ousted six years ago amid concerns among some of the bank’s directors that it was not being overhauled quickly enough.
He had been handed the job in the autumn of 2012 as Barclays fought to repair a corporate reputation which had been left in tatters by the Libor rate-rigging scandal.
Mr Jenkins established 10x a year after his departure, offering to build a cloud-based technology platform for lenders around the world.
His argument that banks’ transition to digitally led services was delivering inadequate results has since been vindicated as increasing numbers of lenders have turned to banking-as-a-service providers such as 10x and Mambu.
Mr Jenkins also sits on the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Committee and the board of the US mortgage provider Fannie Mae.
He chairs Currencies Direct and is a director of Blockchain, which is a fintech unicorn – meaning it is worth at least $1bn.
His latest fundraising at 10x – the company’s first since 2019 – will turn him into one of Britain’s wealthiest fintech entrepreneurs.
The deal will come amid a boom in the financing of UK-based start-ups and scale-ups, with record levels of funding being attracted to the potential returns available in private technology deals.
10x’s existing investors include JP Morgan, which is working with Mr Jenkins’ company on plans to launch a UK-based digital consumer bank under the Chase brand.
Nationwide and Ping An, the giant Chinese insurer, are also shareholders in 10x.
The fintech’s other customers include the Australian bank Westpac, which ironically is now led by John McFarlane, the chairman who sacked Mr Jenkins at Barclays.
In recent months, 10x has announced a series of senior appointments to strengthen its management team under Mr Jenkins, its executive chairman.
“While the full impact and effect of the pandemic is uncertain, we believe, based on our pipeline of activity that the financial services industry and retail banks in particular are continuing to pursue new digital, cloud-native technology solutions to help them address their ongoing legacy cost and customer delivery challenges,” Mr Jenkins said in December.
Lazard is advising 10x on the latest funding round.
10x and BlackRock both declined to comment this weekend.