Barclays Bank=Wank (Barclays Bank rhyming slang)

Barclays Bank was founded in 1690 and is headquartered in London. Barclays is known to New Yorkers mostly for its sponsorship of the Brooklyn arena (“Barclays Center”) for the Nets of the National Basketball Association.
 
Cockney rhyming slang has “Barclay(s)” (Barclays Bank) a rhyme for “wank” (masturbation). The rhyming slang—cited in print since at leas the 1980s—is largely unknown in New York.
 
 
Wikipedia: Barclays
Barclays PLC (LSE: BARC, NYSE: BCS) is a global financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. As of 2010, it is the world’s 10th-largest banking and financial services group and 21st-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine. It has operations in over 50 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America and around 48 million customers. As of 30 June 2010 it had total assets of €1.94 trillion, the third-largest of any bank worldwide (after BNP Paribas and HSBC).
 
Barclays is a universal bank and is organised within two business ‘clusters’: Corporate & Investment Banking and Wealth Management, and Global Retail Banking. The Corporate & Investment Banking and Wealth Management cluster comprises three business units: Barclays Capital (investment banking), Barclays Corporate (commercial banking) and Barclays Wealth (wealth management). The Global Retail Banking cluster comprises four business units: Barclaycard (credit card and loan provision), Barclays Africa, UK Retail Banking and Western Europe Retail Banking.
 
Wikipedia: Barclays Center
The Barclays Center is a sports arena currently under construction in Brooklyn, New York City. The arena is being built partly on a platform over the Metropolitan Transportation Authority-owned Vanderbilt Yards at Atlantic Avenue. It is part of a proposed $4.9 billion sports arena, business and residential complex. The arena is intended to serve as a new home for the National Basketball Association’s New Jersey Nets, currently based at Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey.
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Groundbreaking for the project occurred on March 11, 2010.
 
Urban Dictionary
Barclays
cockney rhyming slang
Barclays Bank - Wank
-“mate, i just had the best barclays of my life”
-“safe”
by Robbie Boot Apr 29, 2008
   
Google Books
The Language of Sexuality
By Alan Richter
Jefferson, NC: McFarland
1987
Pg. 68:
Wank has rhyming slang variations, namely, barclay from Barclays Bank, J. Arthur Rank, and Jodrell Bank, and connections between masturbation and banking, the cinema and astronomy respectively are not too difficult to find.
 
Google Books
The Kenneth Williams letters
By Kenneth Williams
Edited by Russell Davies
London: HarperCollins
1994
Pg. 84:
Rhyming slang: Barclays Bank = wank
   
Google Books
Let’s Spend the Night Together:
Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies
By Pamela Des Barres
Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press
2007
Pg. 83:
The slang for ‘dick’ was Hampton Wick and ‘wank’ was Barclay’s Bank, which was the key to opening the door behind the hotel room doors—our first really successful means of getting close to rock stars and indulging in conversation.
 
Google Books
Conundrum’s Book
By Michael Jenner
London: Michael Jenner
2008
Pg. 16:
“Looks like I’ll have to make do with a Barclays.”
 
A Melvyn? A Barclays? I had no idea what he was talking about. And that must have been written all over me.
 
“The basic rules of rhyming slang aren’t too difficult, you know. I’m sure you can quickly figure it out.”