Pledge to return £10bn to shareholders is overshadowed by investment division concerns
A 9% rise in the share price counts as an enthusiastic reception for a new strategic plan, but don’t forget the context at Barclays. The shares are still worth a fifth less than in late-2021 when the chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, or Venkat as he’s known, took the helm. At 162p, they also stand at slightly less than half the bank’s reported book value of its assets. Scepticism towards Barclays, the market’s default setting since the financial crisis of 2008-09, runs deeper than one day’s applause for a promise to return £10bn to shareholders over three years.
The source of that suspicion is well known. It’s not just the bank’s rate of turnover in chief executives, or its ability to find novel regulatory scrapes. It’s also the not-unrelated presence of a volatile investment banking division that is big by European standards but mid-ranking by Wall Street ones. In a post-crisis world where regulators rightly insist on fatter capital cushions, the perpetual question at Barclays is whether to stick or twist in investment banking.
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