May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc may hire as many as 65 bankers for its European mergers advisory business this year as Britain’s third-biggest bank seeks to become one of the top three global securities firms.

Barclays Capital, the investment-banking unit, plans to add 30 to 40 bankers in Italy, Germany and France, and 15 to 25 in the U.K., Paul G. Parker, global head of mergers and acquisitions, said in an interview on May 21 in New York. The firm named Mark Warham and Matthew Ponsonby co-heads of European M&A last week.

Barclays Capital, which previously focused on bonds, loans and foreign exchange, surged to fifth in U.S. takeovers after the acquisition of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s North American unit in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The London-based firm ranks 21st in Europe, where Lehman’s operations were bought by Nomura Holdings Inc.

“We aim to be top three across all products and regions” in investment banking, said Parker, who is spending a significant part of his time in Europe, helping recruit bankers. Barclays Capital wants to be a leader in cross-border deals “by combining the firm’s global perspective with local expertise.”

Barclays Capital advised Pfizer Inc. on its $64 billion acquisition of Wyeth, the biggest takeover this year, and Verizon Communications Inc. on its $5.25 billion sale of phone lines to Frontier Communications Corp. It helped Dow Chemical Co. sell a stake in a Dutch oil-refining venture with Total SA to Valero Energy Corp. for $725 million.

Hiring Teams

Barclays Capital plans to hire teams in the U.K., Germany, France, and Italy, including heads of M&A for the countries, said Parker, 45. The additions will build upon existing coverage of the Iberian region, overseen by Inigo Paneda and a team hired last year from Nomura, Japan’s biggest brokerage.

The firm also has about 30 former ABN Amro Holding NV bankers who will continue to focus on mergers and acquisitions in eastern and central Europe, as well as a team of about 15 in Asia, also primarily from ABN Amro, according to Parker.

“It makes sense to hire more bankers as they need to improve industry coverage,” said Katsunobu Komizo, chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Executive Search Partners Co. “The business requires strong and long-term relationships with top corporate executives.”

Barclays Capital has advised on European takeovers worth about $7.7 billion this year, giving it under 3.5 percent of the market, Bloomberg data show. That includes the firm’s agreement to sell its iShares exchange-traded funds business to CVC Capital Partners Ltd. for $4.37 billion.

‘Strong Brand’

Credit Suisse Group AG is No. 1 in European mergers, followed by Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bloomberg data show. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ranks seventh after Zurich-based UBS AG.

“Barclays’s strong brand in Europe coupled with its strong lending and fixed income relationships positions us well to work with existing and new clients globally on transactions,” said Parker, who joined Barclays after the takeover of Lehman, where he ran global mergers with Mark Shafir, now at Citigroup.

Barclays Capital is the leading underwriter of international bonds for a second straight year, with an 8.7 percent slice of the market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It ranks second in arranging U.S. bond sales after JPMorgan Chase & Co., the data show.

‘Meaningful’ Pickup

Jerry del Missier, president of Barclays Capital, said earlier this month that expanding in mergers advisory and stock underwriting in Europe and Asia was the “single-biggest initiative this year.” The firm aims to add about 300 people for European and Asian equities by the end of 2009.

Societe Generale SA, France’s third-largest bank, said last week it plans to hire about 35 bankers to build up its M&A advisory business.

Barclays Capital this month hired Sam Dean from Deutsche Bank to be co-head of global equity markets in London. In April, it named Jim Renwick, a former vice chairman of investment banking at UBS, to run U.K. stock sales and corporate broking. The firm added senior coverage bankers in chemicals, oil and gas, metals and mining, health care and retail.

Barclays Capital’s new European M&A co-head Warham was most recently chairman of U.K. investment banking at Morgan Stanley, a post he took in 2007 after two years with Britain’s Takeover Panel. Ponsonby joins from Citigroup, where he was a global co- head of infrastructure investment banking.

No Government Funds

The firm is already “gaining market share” as it takes advantage of market dislocations, said Parker, who has more than 23 years of experience in M&A and advised on major telecommunications deals, including Cingular Wireless’s $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services in 2004.

Barclays has so far avoided taking money from the U.K. government by boosting capital through stock and asset sales after $18.6 billion of credit losses and writedowns during the global financial crisis. All the firm’s major U.S. competitors, including New York-based JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, have taken bailout money.

Mergers and acquisitions, down about 35 percent so far this year, will pick up as markets stabilize, said Parker, who expects to see deals in natural resources, including metals, mining and minerals, as well as power and infrastructure.

“We’ll start to come out of it,” Parker said. “We expect activity to pick up meaningfully in the fall.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Katherine Snyder in New York at at ksnyder@blomberg.net

Last Updated: May 25, 2009 05:22 EDT