The wealth and investment
management division of UK-listed Barclays logged an adjusted pre-tax profit of
£115 million ($180 million) in the fourth quarter of 2012, almost double the
level in the same three months of 2011, at £60 million, it said today.

For Barclays as a whole, its
adjusted pre-tax profit fell to £1.094 billion from £2.445 billion over that
period. For the head office and other operations, Barclays posted a £718
million loss in the final quarter of last year; corporate and investment
banking profits fell to £965 million in Q4 of last year from £1.485 billion a
year earlier.

Last year, Barclays was hit with
heavy fines and its chief executive, Bob Diamond, resigned after the bank
admitted to manipulating interbank interest rates. (UBS, the Swiss bank, has
also been hit with fines for similar offences, along with Royal Bank of Scotland.)

In his statement, Antony Jenkins,
who has been CEO since last autumn, spoke of the bank’s TRANSFORM programme to
re-shape the culture and operations across the Barclays bank in the wake of
last year’s interbank interest rate saga.

For the whole of 2012, across the entire banking group,
Barclays’ adjusted pre-tax profit rose to £7.048 billion, a year-on-year gain
of 26 per cent.

“That is a good achievement given the context in which we
operated for much of the year,” Jenkins said in the statement.

Wealth management

Within the wealth and investment management business,
Barclays said it logged total income of £1.815 billion for the whole of 2012, a
4 per cent year-on-year gain; profit before tax for 2012 was £315 million, up by 52 per
cent. The cost/income ratio of this division was 81 per cent at the end of
December last year, down from 86 per cent a year before. Client assets rose by
13 per cent to £186 billion at the end of last year from £164.2 billion at the
end of 2011, mainly driven by net new assets in high net worth businesses, the
bank said.

“This is another
strong and pleasing set of results, which builds on the consistent trend
established since the launch of our strategic investment programme,
Gamma, in 2010.  In particular, the 13 per cent increase in client assets is
indicative of the growing strength of our franchise, particularly in our
global high net worth businesses, which have been the focus of our
investment," Tom Kalaris, CEO of the division, said in a statement.

Barclays said it had a Core Tier 1 ratio, as measured under
the Basel bank capital rules, of 10.9 per cent at the end of last year.

Business review, job cuts

The bank is to cut total headcount this year by at least 3,700 positions, including 1,800 job reductions in the corporate and investment banking arm and 1,900 jobs in the Europe retail and business banking, causing restructuring charges of almost £500 million in the first quarter of this year, the bank said.

Among other targets under the TRANSFORM agenda, the bank said it aimed to deliver a return on equity in excess of the group cost of equity in 2015, which is assumed to remain at 11.5 per cent. 

Barclays also aims to cut its total cost base by £1.7 billion to £16.8 billion in 2015, including interim
cost estimates of £18.5 billion and £17.5 billion in 2013 and 2014 respectively.