Barclays, Hargreaves Lansdown, Harwood, Barclays and Deutsche Bank in Investments this week

Barclays customers have been blocked from monitoring their investments and managing their money for months because of delays with the bank’s new Smart Investor service. Barclays initially dismissed the problems as teething issues, but, six months later, investors are still complaining about the service
Hargreaves Lansdown has hired Deanna Oppenheimer a fintech expert and former chief executive of Barclays’ retail banking arm, as its new chair, replacing Mike Evans, who has retired
Harwood has announced that it started its new financial year with three acquisitions: Finance for Life, Peter John Vickery’s financial advice business and Anthony Harding & Partners. The acquisitions were announced when the wealth management firm published its full-year results on 23 January 2018
Barclays’ former chief executive, Bob Diamond, plans to join the board of a €600m acquisition vehicle called Spaxs which is planning to acquire a small Italian bank. Spaxs plans to turn the bank into an online lender to small businesses and a merchant bank, which will buy non-performing loans from other banks and package them for re-sale to institutional investors
Deutsche Bank has hired a Coutts managing director, John Saunders, as chief operating officer for its growing UK wealth management team. The move by Deutsche Bank follows the appointment of Michael Morley to head up its UK wealth business in July 2017, and Matthew Spencer as UK head of intermediaries and multi-family offices last mont