Barclays has seen half-year profits surge, but said it would have to fork out an extra £700 million to meet compensation claims for mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI).
Group pre-tax profits jumped 13% to £2.34 billion for the six months ending in June, as the lender signalled the end of a major corporate restructure designed to focus on its core UK and US business.
However, the legacy of the PPI scandal continued to affect the bank, with core profit before tax slipping 25% to £2.98 billion in response to the extra PPI provision.
(John Stillwell/PA)
Chief executive Jes Staley said: “Our business is now radically simplified, the restructuring is complete, our capital ratio is within our end-state target range, and, while we are also working to put conduct issues behind us, we can now focus on what matters most to our shareholders: improving group returns.”
The second quarter marked a milestone for the bank as it completed “two critically important planks” of its strategy to offload unwanted businesses.
The banking giant said it had driven down its majority shareholding in Barclays Africa Group to the extent where it can now apply for regulatory deconsolidation.
(Joe Giddens/PA)
Barclays expects to complete this process next year.
It has also run down its non-core unit ahead of schedule to below £25 billion in risk-weighted assets, meaning it could close the operation six months early.
Mr Staley added: “Accomplishing both of these milestones marks an end to the restructuring of the Barclays Group, and brings forward the date when our shareholders can benefit from the full earnings power of this business.
“That power is evident once again in the performance reported today.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here