BARCLAYS signalled that its cost-cutting drive will continue as it posted a 5% rise in under-lying third-quarter profits despite a sharp fall in income and earnings at its investment bank.
The bank revealed that it has cut 3500 jobs in 2011 so far, ahead of the 3000 that in August it suggested it had earmarked for the year.
Pre-tax profit in the three months to the end of September reached £2.4 billion. Stripping out one-off items, earnings were £1.3bn, up 5% on the same period of 2010.
Barclays said its underlying profit for the first nine months of this year was just over £5bn, up 18% from a year earlier.
The group aims to achieve cost savings of at least £1bn by the end of 2013.
Chief executive Bob Diamond said the bank has no specific job cut targets but warned: “The sorts of trends you have seen this year, you should expect them to continue.”
The bank recently announced it is cutting 65 jobs at a back office operation in Glasgow after deciding to move work offshore although the Scottish operation is expected to benefit from transfers of work from elsewhere in the UK.
Barclays’ announcement follows that of Glasgow-based Clydesdale Bank, which last week said it is to cut additional posts after shedding the equivalent of 379 full-time roles in the year to the end of September.
Mr Diamond said: “There’s no question market conditions this year have been challenging and we’d expect that to continue in some way into next year, given the weaker economic growth we’re seeing.”
But the bank highlighted that performance has improved in all but one business area, its Barclays Capital investment bank.
Income at BarCap fell 22% from the second quarter to £2.3bn although the bank said it is outperforming rivals in an industry that has been hit by volatile market conditions in recent months. The bank is putting aside 46% of income from BarCap to cover bonuses and other employee costs, against 43% last year. Meanwhile, Barclays’ investment in fund manager BlackRock was marked down by £1.8bn.
A notable bright spot for the company was its UK retail and business banking arm where adjusted pre-tax earnings more than doubled year-on-year to £494m as it benefited from falling bad debts.
Overall losses on bad debts were £1bn in the third quarter, down 16% from a year ago, and down by one-third this year.
Mr Diamond said that companies are still hoarding cash rather than seeking loans.
“The corporate sector is very strong. It could really use some confidence.”
Ian Gordon, analyst at Evolution, said: “We knew that Q3 wouldn’t be pretty but this ranks as a thoroughly respectable performance.”
Barclays cut its holdings of troubled eurozone sovereign debt, from Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, by 31% to £8bn.
Mr Diamond said that an agreement for measures to tackle the eurozone crisis is a “positive development”.
But he added: “There is definitely more work to do with the plan in stronger fiscal integration and how to bring stability back, particularly to the funding market.
“We are certainly building into our plans for 2012 a weak economic backdrop.”
The bank is to pay a 1p a share dividend on December 9.
Barclays’ shares closed down 5.9p or 2.9% at 195.3p.
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