Barclays puts aside further £800m to cover currency-rigging scandal fines
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Version 0 of 1. Barclays has put aside a further £800 million to cover the cost of fines from the currency rigging scandal, taking the total bill towards £2 billion. The bank opted out of an overall settlement over the forex market fixing claims last year when six rivals paid a total of £2.6 billion to settle with global regulators. Last month it topped up its provisions for a possible settlement and today's £800 million addition to that pot takes the total funds reserved for the issue to over £2 billion. “Resolving legacy conduct issues is also an important part of our plan to transform Barclays. We are working hard to expedite their settlement,” chief executive Antony Jenkins said in a statement. Barclays also said it had allocated another £150 million for PPI redress based on updated estimates in the cost of compensating customers wrongly sold the product. The bank also reported first quarter figures, including a 9% rise in underlying pre-tax profit to £1.85 billion on the back of a stronger performance by its investment bank. It follows a large scale restructuring of the investment bank which involved exiting businesses and axeing thousands of jobs. |