Skip to main content

Nice targets, but scepticism is hard to shake at Barclays | Nils Pratley

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.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/U8BefKi
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Guardian view on Covid-19, five years on: lessons still to be learned | Editorial

Though many would rather forget the pandemic, we are living with its consequences. Are we any better prepared for the next one? “When asked what was the biggest disaster of the twentieth century, almost nobody answers the Spanish flu,” notes Laura Spinney in her book Pale Rider, of an event that killed as many as one in 20 of the global population. “There is no cenotaph, no monument in London, Moscow or Washington DC.” Most of us will better understand that absence after Covid-19 , which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization five years ago this week. Some cannot put those events behind them: most obviously, many of those bereaved by the 7 million deaths worldwide (not including those indirectly caused by the pandemic ), and the significant numbers still living with long Covid . Others want to forget the loss of loved ones, the months of isolation and the costs to businesses, families and mental health. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? I...
Post a Comment
Read more