Bob Diamond, former chief executive of Barclays PLC, said he wouldn’t invest in large European banks given the Continent’s weak economy and the financial firms’ shaky recovery from the downturn.
The opportunity in Europe lies in smaller and newer banks, “not in institutions that have legacy technology, legacy loans, legacy talent,” Diamond, who now runs Atlas Merchant Capital, said Tuesday at the Bloomberg Invest New York conference.
Diamond also said that U.S. regional banks are “quite healthy” but that their prices are too high for him to invest.
Diamond, 67, founded Atlas Merchant in 2013 along with the African banking venture Atlas Mara Ltd. He handed over the reins at Atlas Mara to Michael Wilkerson earlier this year to focus on investing in European ventures.
