Credit Europe Bank
Barclays Report £11Billion Pre-Tax Profits For 2009 But Uk Retail Banking Profits Are Down
Barclays said today that its net profit for 2009 more than doubled, helped by a £6.33 billion gain from an asset sale and profits from Barclays Capital, but bad-debt charges weighed on the results, which still beat analysts expectations, with pre-tax profit of over £11 billion, which will possibly beat any other non-Chinese bank in the world.
Barclays said 2010 started strongly, with profit before tax “well ahead of first half and full year 2009 run rates.” It also said its “planning assumption is for a moderate decline in impairment” in 2010.
Net profit for the year ended Dec. 31 was £9.39 billion, up from £4.38 billion a year ago, the bank said.
Fourth-quarter net profit rose to £6.66 billion from £557 million a year earlier, according to Dow Jones calculations.
Barclays reported a £6.33 billion gain in the last quarter from the sale of Barclays Global Investors to BlackRock Inc., which was closed in December.
On a pretax-profit level, results beat the £11.31 billion estimated by a poll of five analysts. It reported a pretax profit of £11.64 billion for the year, up from £6.08 billion in 2008, when it posted a £2.41 billion gain on acquisitions.
Impairment charges for the year jumped 49% to £8.07 billion from £5.42 billion. The figure, however, was below the £9 billion estimate the bank gave late last year.
“We have strengthened our financial position considerably over the year in the areas of capital, liquidity and leverage and are well positioned to manage further changes that may be required of us by our regulators,” Barclays said in a statement.
Its Core Tier 1 ratio stood at 10% at December, up from 5.6% a year ago.
Breaking it down by division, profit before tax at Barclays Capital rose 89% in 2009, thanks to the purchase of Lehman Brothers, to £2.46 billion “as a result of very strong performances in the U.K., Europe and the U.S., partially offset by a charge of £1.82 million relating to own credit,” the bank said.
Pretax profit for the U.K. retail banking business, however, fell 55% to £612 million as economic conditions remained challenging. Pretax profit at Barclays commercial bank also fell, down 41% to £749 million, the bank said.
The bank declared a final dividend of 1.5 pence a share, giving a total of 2.5 pence a share for the year.
The bank also said that Barclays Chief Executive Officer John Varley and President Robert Diamond had waived bonus payments for 2009.
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Paying credit cards from a foreign bank account?
I will be living and working in Europe for a year, and will be getting my salary there deposited into a local bank account in Euros. Is there any way to use the European bank account to pay online my monthly payments for US credit cards? If that’s possible, will I be charged a fee for the currency conversion from euros to dollars? I know I could just wire myself some funds every once in a while from the European to the US account but this will be much more of a hassle considering I don’t speak the local language.
Its not that big of a problem, many banks have english speaking staff. Anyway, you can use a service like Lloyds Bank, which specializes in overseas money transfers. You pay Lloyds from your bank account online and they will pay directly to your credit card company. Its cheaper fees then what most banks do to transfer money overseas. All banks usually charge you a fee for transferring funds overseas, does not matter if you convert or not and then there is the rate that they will use to convert the money.
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