James Watters

Ryan Hayward is Head of Digital Assets and Strategic Investments at Barclays, based in London. His digital assets remit covers digital asset strategy, governance, and the establishment of new asset, money and tokenisation initiatives across the bank on a global basis. His strategic investments remit covers originating, executing and portfolio managing all strategic principal equity investments made by Barclays in external companies, with a geographic scope spanning Europe and Asia.

Hayward joined Barclays in 2011 as an M&A advisor in the investment bank and moved to the Strategy and Corporate Development team in 2013, where he acted as a principal in originating and executing M&A transactions. Prior to Barclays, he was at Nevsky Capital, a $7bn long/short equity asset manager, where he covered oil and gas, chemicals and agriculture. Before that, he worked at Deutsche Bank as a corporate finance advisor in the Industrials practice across Europe. He holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MA (Oxon) from the University of Oxford.