By Steve Slater
LONDON, Oct 27 (IFR) - Barclays said its investment banktook market share from rivals in the third quarter, helping theUK bank post revenue gains in fixed income, equities, advisoryand underwriting.
It followed US rivals in reporting strong revenues in debttrading, and also did well in other areas to lift optimism thatafter three years of restructuring it is better placed tocompete with the big US banks.
"We had a very strong quarter, including relative to the USinvestment banks," said Jes Staley, Barclays chief executive.
"We like the footprint we now have post the moves we made inJanuary," he said, referring to a pullback from Russia, Braziland seven countries in Asia at the start of this year.
"We think we have the right amount of risk capital allocatedto the investment bank, so we like our position today and wehope to continue to move that business forward," he toldreporters on a conference call on Thursday.
Barclays reported credit and macro revenues of £947m for thethird quarter, up 40% from a year ago and in line with the riseshown by the top five US banks.
Barclays' equities revenues rose 11% from a year ago to£461m and its banking fees were up 29% to £644m, bothoutperforming its US rivals and Deutsche Bank.
That underpinned a pretax profit of £885m for the corporateand investment bank in the third quarter, more than double the£358m profit of a year ago and delivering a return on averagetangible equity of 9.2%.
Barclays' group profits came in at £837m for the quarter,after the bank took another £600m to compensate customermis-sold UK insurance products.
Staley said the investment bank's performance showed thebenefits of diversification and helped Barclays weather marketvolatility and concerns about the UK economy following Britain'svote in June to leave the European Union.
He said Barclays was assessing if it needs to move anybusinesses or staff due to Brexit.
"We have to maintain the optionality to execute our businessstrategy. This political debate around Brexit is going to go onfor a very long time, so we are looking at our options.
"There is not any imminent move that we would take, it's waytoo early to do that," he said.
Barclays said it reduced risk-weighted assets in itsnon-core unit by £3bn to £44bn last quarter, and remained ontrack to close the business by the end of next year as moreunwanted assets are sold. (Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Gareth Gore)
Barclays (BARC)
