Barclaycard swallows Shopsmart whole

NEWS Barclaycard has bought out its partners and taken full control of ecommerce venture Shopsmart signalling more job cuts at the e-tail site. Barclaycard did not say how much it paid for the remaining share. Shopsmart was part of a fifty-fifty joint venture between Barclaycard-owned Indigo Square with Japanese investment bank Nomura set up in November last year. In April Indigo Square purchased Shopsmart.com for £1m and subsequently re-launched Indigo Square under the Shopsmart brand. A spokesman for Barclaycard today confirmed there was "A likelihood the buy-out will mean more lay-offs". He refused to speculate on how many redundancies would be required, and in what areas.