An ambitious turnaround plan at Barclays appeared to be showing early signs of bearing fruit as the bank announced a fall in quarterly profits that was smaller than the markets had feared.
C.S. Venkatakrishnan, also known as Venkat, Barclays’ chief executive, is under pressure to end years of stock market underperformance and in February he set out a strategy to rectify the situation with a wide-ranging overhaul. He said that first-quarter results from the FTSE 100 lender showed the shake-up was on track.
While pre-tax profits at the group slid by 12 per cent year-on-year to just under £2.3 billion, this was better than the £2.2 billion that had been expected by City analysts.
“Across the bank and within each of our five divisions, we
