Barbara Byrne

She is responsible for leading the firm’s relationships with a diverse group of corporate clients, including GE, IBM, Altria, EMC, HP, U.S. Steel, Microsoft, Cisco, and Williams. Byrne joined Barclays from Lehman Brothers, where she was a 28-year veteran of the Lehman Brothers Investment Banking Division and was credited for developing longstanding partnerships with major corporate clients on behalf of the firm.

Byrne was the first and only woman to achieve a vice chairman position at Lehman Brothers in the firm’s 158-year history. During her time there, she held senior management positions in the Energy and Technology Investment Banking Groups and served as the senior member of Lehman’s Equity Restructuring Group. Over the course of her career at Lehman Brothers, Byrne led teams on diverse financing and strategic advisory transactions ranging from representing Digital Equipment in its 1998 merger with Compaq, to advising the Williams Companies on its 2002–2005 liquidity restructuring. In 2007, Byrne led the teams advising Altria on the $62 billion spin-off of Kraft, the $1.1 billion initial public offering of VMWare’s carve-out from EMC, and GE on the $11.6 billion sale of its plastics business to SABIC. In 2008, she led the teams advising Altria on the $113 billion spin-off of Phillip Morris International, as well as the $8 billion strategic partnership between Mubadala and GE.

Byrne participates in industry conferences as a forum leader on strategic issues as well as trends. She is a frequent speaker on behalf of women in business, finance, and leadership and has provided commentary on strategic financial restructurings for news organizations such as Fortune, Forbes, Money Line, and CNBC.