Can Jes Staley Fix Barclays Fast Enough?

James “Jes” Staley’s hiring as chief executive officer of Barclays Plc in 2015 came with a sense of déjà vu. Three years earlier, the U.K. establishment drummed out Bob Diamond, the American architect of Barclays’s investment bank who’d risen to CEO. Now another New Englander steeped in Wall Street risk-taking had come to London with a similar playbook focused on growing the bank’s securities unit.

More than two years later, Staley is racing to avoid the same fate as Diamond. First, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority is considering whether he can keep his job after he tried to find out the identity of a whistleblower who raised concerns about one of his hires. Should Staley survive that threat, he faces a countdown to convince skeptics his bet on building a trans-Atlantic investment banking powerhouse will succeed, according to executives, board members, and shareholders interviewed for this article.