Blythe Masters, former head of commodities branch at JP Morgan and a blockchain entrepreneur, hasn’t accepted the offer to run Barclays’ investment bank. 

A job at Barclays would require her to quit Digital Asset Holdings, her company specialising in distributed ledgers. Masters said it was impossible for her at the moment, writes Reuters. “I am in mid-flight at Digital Asset and fully committed to what we are doing,” she said.

Barclays’ CEO Jes Staley, who invited Masters, was her colleague at JP Morgan. He only took office at Barclays on 1 December.

Bloomberg Gadfly suggests that this case might indicate a turning point in finance when technology becomes more attractive for financiers than investment banking. “One of the biggest opportunities in finance now lies outside the banks”, says an article commenting Masters’ refuse to work at Barclays.

Blythe Masters joined Digital Assets in March as CEO. The start-up offers blockchain technologies for financial system. It claims to make record keeping simpler and safer, minimising the time of financial transactions and excluding third parties.

Andrew Levich