Barclays Crashes Most Since 2012 On Dividend Cut, Abysmal Results
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
03/01/2016
Don’t look now, but Barclays just joined the chorus of European banks reporting horrific results.
Shares plunged by double-digits on Tuesday after the bank said it swung to a £1.9 billion pre-tax loss in Q4 and moved to cut the dividend and shed its African subsidiary.
The payout will be cut by more than half this year and next in an effort to shore up the bank’s capital. For all of 2015, the red ink summed to £394 million, markedly worse than 2014. Adjusted pre-tax profit (which, as FT put it, strips out “lots” of one-offs) was £5.4 billion, a miss on consensus of £5.8 billion.
The bank will look to exit a 62% stake in Barclays Africa going forward and new CEO Jes Staley plans to exit the continent altogether. For the foreseeable future, Barclays will focus on its businesses in the US and the UK. The dividend will be cut to 3 pence per share from 6.5p in 2015.
“While we believe that the cut in dividend will be taken negatively initially, it will help to allay fears of capital weakness,” analysts at Haitong Research wrote on Tuesday.
“In the few months since Staley’s appointment, Barclays has made sweeping cuts across its investment bank and exited several businesses including in Asia, aiming to trim costs, reduce risk and shore up its balance sheet,” Reuters notes. “However, legacy issues continue to hurt the bank, with 4.01 billion pounds of provisions made against an array of regulatory missteps, compared with 2.36 billion a year earlier.”
The Rest…HERE
