US trading blunder and report from Barclays

British financial conglomerate Barclays said its quarterly profit fell as Barclays noted pressure on customers from the cost of living and suffered from a United States trading blunder.

Barclays reported a pre-tax profit of £2.2bln for the first 3 months of 2022. As the company noted, this result is better than expected. However, last year it was £2.4 billion.

The error, which caused it to sell more structured bonds than allowed by United States rules, is being scrutinised by regulators and is likely to result in a fine for Barclays company, while the bank also deferred a £1bn capital repayment to shareholders.

It has been a bumpy start to the tenure of the new group chief executive Venkatakrishnan following the scandalous departure of James Staley in November last year amid an investigation into his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Barclays' Q1 2022 results show that the company recorded a charge of £141m for borrower arrears, more than double the £55m it did a year ago, as the cost-of-living crisis begins to take its toll on customers.

It is worth noting that the Barclays sees no signs that borrowers are having repayment problems and expects arrears to be lower than before the outbreak due to the downturn in unsecured lending.

Company's costs rose to £4.1bn as it increased by around £500m following regulatory investigations, and more recently the company admitted it sold more products to investors in the US than it was allowed to.

Also, the results were supported by the impressive performance of its investment bank, with total revenues rising to £6.5bn (+10%) for the Q1 2022.

Barclays was founded in 1896 and is headquartered in London.

The board of the company:

Nigel Higgins - Group Chairman;
C.S. Venkatakrishnan - Group Chief Executive;
Anna Cross - Group Finance Director;
Mike Ashley, Robert Berry, Tim Breedon, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Dawn Fitzpatrick, Mary Francis, Crawford Gillies, Julia Wilson and Diane Schueneman are Independent Non-Executive Directors;
Brian Gilvary - Senior Independent Director.