All Lombard Street to a china orange as the last bank moves out

Last exit from Lombard Street. This week Barclays begins to pack up and move out. The bank’s founder set up shop there as a goldsmith 315 years ago, and Barclays has been established on its corner site under the sign of the black eagle since 1728, periodically building and rebuilding. The post-war head office, a massive stone money box, was knocked down to make way for a lumpy effort in the Moorish taste, known to its City neighbours as the Islamic Cultural Centre. The directors never liked it — they had to go downstairs to tomb-like lunch-rooms in the basement — and four years ago put down an order for a tower in Canary Wharf. In May, when the move is complete, Barclays will have 5,000 of its staff all toiling away under the same lofty roof. Such is banking fashion. HSBC has a taller tower next door. Whether its move will help to bring Barclays closer to its customers can be debated. In other kinds of business, vast and imposing head offices with a department for everything have now been superseded. Only Shell, with its Kremlin near Waterloo Station, still survives from these corporate bureaucracies, and Shell has lost its place as an example of how a great company ought to be run. Already thoughtful bankers worry about keeping so many of their precious eggs in one steel and glass basket. Barclays ordered its tower in the week before the World Trade Center was attacked. Perhaps the next fashion in banking will be for dispersal, but when Barclays has gone there will not be a bank left in Lombard Street.

Street of ghosts