BARCLAYS’ head of UK banking wakes up at his home in Belgravia at 6.30am. “I embark on a usually doomed attempt to get to the gym,” says Roger Davis. “I need to shift two stone.” Instead, he will drink a fruit and vegetable smoothie and is driven into the office by 8am.

On Mondays he reviews the press with his communications staff and hears reports from the UK banking executive. “We look at income and costs and customer satisfaction.” If he has lunch he takes it in-house. He also travels round to see customers and staff in the branches two days a week. “I will do eight to ten branches in a day.” A lot of his work is done in the back of the car on his Blackberry.

Once a week he will try “not very successfully” to take his wife, Alison, out to dinner.

VITAL STATISTICS

Born: June 4, 1956
Marital status: married, one daughter
School: King’s College, Taunton
University: Worcester College, Oxford
First job: cadet at Sandhurst
Salary package: £1.3m
Homes: Belgravia, Wiltshire
Car: green Range Rover
Favourite book: Band of Brothers, by Stephen Ambrose
Favourite music: Elton John, Dire Straits
Favourite film: Casablanca
Favourite gadget: Blackberry
Last holiday: Vietnam
Interests: rugby, shooting, wine, collecting 20th century art

WORKING SPACE

ROGER DAVIS works from a modest office in Barclays’ lavish new London base, a 31-storey skyscraper at Docklands’ Canary Wharf. Davis’s glass-panelled room, at the centre of the building on the 24th floor, is off an open-plan office. With grey carpet and green walls, it is also empty, bar a desk and chair and a large plasma screen. He has only just moved in. Much of his work is also done in a conference room on the 31st floor, which he has commandeered for important meetings. This room overlooks London, and is furnished with a vast meeting table and chairs.

He promises to move his Far Eastern memorabilia in soon. He also plans to have his office feng shui’d.

Does that really work? “I’ve no idea,” he says. But he did it in Hong Kong and plans to do it here.

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