30th Jul 2014 06:56
LONDON (Alliance News) - Barclays PLC on Wednesday reported a 6.7% fall in first-half adjusted pretax profit, as adverse currency movements and a fall in the profitability of its investment bank were only partially offset by improvements in personal and corporate banking, Barclaycard and its 'non-core' division.
In a statement, Barclays said it made a GBP3.35 billion adjusted pretax profit in the first six months of 2014, compared with a GBP3.59 billion adjusted pretax profit in the corresponding period last year.
The adjusted figures, which strip out items including own credit, costs of provisions for mis-sold products, and goodwill impairment, were presented alongside statutory results showing a 49% increase in pretax profit to GBP2.50 billion from GBP1.68 billion.
Barclays maintained its interim dividend 2.0 pence per share.
The news comes after a hard first six months of the year for Barclays, which in May detailed plans to operate four core businesses - personal and corporate banking, Barclaycard, Africa Banking, and the investment bank - as well as a 'non-core' entity which includes assets that either don't fit with Barclays' strategy or with its targeted returns.
At the heart of the plan were measures to shrink down its investment bank with the aim of reducing the unit's influence on Barclays' overall earnings and capital. Under the restructuring, Barclays wants to shrink the investment bank down to just 30% of risk-weighted assets from just over half prior to the move coming into action. The actions, which are also designed to focus the unit's primary operations on the UK and the US while scaling back in Asia, marked a departure from the strategy pursued by former Chief Executive Officer Bob Diamond, who envisaged the investment bank as a global powerhouse to take on Wall Street's biggest players.
However, Barclays has recently had to deal with allegations made by the New York Attorney General that it ran its dark pool share trading platform LX to the benefit of high-frequency traders at the expense of its other clients. The bank has said that it does not believe the lawsuit to be justified and is seeking to have it dismissed.
By Samuel Agini; [email protected]; @samuelagini
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