Jerry del Missier, president of Barclays Capital, has at least one experience he can share with Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs. They were both initially turned down for a job by the firms they now lead.

Del Missier – who moved to New York three months ago with a brief to grow the investment bank’s market share in the United States – used to have a framed rejection letter dated 1987 from Barclays in his office in London. He had just gained an MBA from Queen’s School of Business in his native Ontario, Canada, and the British bank was an obvious choice for a young investment banker.