Barclays PLC (BCS) plans to hire up to 200 high-end investment representatives over the next four years in a move to expand its new wealth management foothold in the Americas.

Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) into bankruptcy, Barclays acquired Lehman's private investment management unit to gain a presence in the coveted U.S. market.

Since then, the U.K. bank has recruited roughly 50 representatives - the firm's name for financial advisers. Nearly half of the new additions were top producers, who had an average annual production of roughly $2.9 million and managed more than $350 million in client assets.

Barclays also has its sights set on potential acquisitions, both in the U.S. and Latin America, which it sees as a key growth region.

"While most firms will struggle for a number of years with these very large integrations, a lot of overlap, and a lot of downsizing, we're going to be executing a very significant growth plan with a positive brand," said Jack Petersen, chief executive of Barclays Wealth Americas.

That strategy is part of Barclays' push to gain a larger share of the global wealth market. The bank has boosted its total assets under management to $235 billion, as of December 31, from $156 billion in 2005. Barclays has 1,650 professionals who work with clients in 25 countries, up from 700 in 17 countries three years ago.

Within the Americas, Barclays has 13 offices and 250 representatives. With its recruiting outlook, the company expects to reach a total of 450 to 500 advisers. In sharp contrast to some of its competitors, clients of Barclays include only the richest of the rich - investors with investable assets of $10 million and above.

"The strategy for us has always been to focus on the higher end of scale in the U.S. There are people do very well selling to retail, but we're not interested in doing that," said Tom Kalaris, chief executive of Barclays Wealth.

Some of Barclays' recent new recruits include high-producers Adam Shafiroff, Maureen Clancy and Zamir Siddiqi, who joined from Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK), and AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (AB).

Barclays' growth in the U.S. came after it spent several months evaluating opportunities there. Barclays determined that building the wealth management unit organically would be expensive and take no less than five years. Instead, Lehman's downfall gave Barclays access to a high-net worth business that focused on asset allocation and had a familiar culture.

"There's two type of acquisitions - the strategic one and the opportunistic one...This one was both, in my opinion," said Robert Ellis, principal and head of Wealth Management at Novarica, a research and consulting firm.

With Barclays' projected growth forecast, Ellis said, the wealth manager would compare favorably with Credit Suisse Group (CS), whose U.S private bank has 15 offices and 400 relationship managers.

With considerable merger-and-acquisition activity during the financial crisis, Barclays expects to have opportunities to pursue banks, trust companies, and asset managers that, Petersen said, are "probably too small from a scale point of view."

He said Barclays will be "pretty active in evaluating acquisition opportunities."

Barclays also sees Latin America, with its growing economies and mix of ultra-high-net worth investors, as a maturing market and a place where it could open more offices. The wealth manager plans to work closely with Barclays Capital, the investment-banking arm of the U.K. bank, which has already made a significant push into the region. Barclays has hired more than 200 professionals to build up its equities sales, trading, and research capabilities in Latin America, Europe and Japan as other competitors have scaled down.

-By Brett Philbin, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2173; brett.philbin@dowjones.com

(Kejal Vyas contributed to this report.)