Barclays takes another US$1.2b hit to cover past problems

[LONDON] Barclays set aside another 800 million pounds (S$1.59 billion) on Wednesday to cover fines and settlements for alleged foreign exchange manipulation and other past conduct issues, dragging profits down by a quarter.

Barclays reported a statutory pretax profit of 1.3 billion pounds, down 26 per cent from a year ago, after increasing its provision, which it said was mainly to cover foreign exchange issues. It last year set aside 1.25 billion to cover potential FX settlements.

Its underlying pretax profit was 1.85 billion pounds, up 9 per cent from a year ago and just above the average forecast of 1.81 billion pounds from analysts polled by the company.

REUTERS