Back to top

Image: Bigstock

Barclays Successfully Creates a New Entity with Ring Fencing

Read MoreHide Full Article

In sync with the U.K. government’s requirement, Barclays (BCS - Free Report) has successfully completed ring fencing. Consequently, its investment banking operation has been separated from the retail lending division. This news was first reported by The Telegraph.

Ring fencing is the largest structural reform imposed on U.K. banks. It requires banks with more than £25 billion in deposits to separate their essential banking services from investment banking operations, effective Jan 1, 2019. This is to prevent a replay of the 2008 financial crisis, when banks’ poor investment decisions put pressure on ordinary depositors, leading to big taxpayer-funded bailouts.

Barclays completed the transformation during the Easter weekend so that the customers face minimum inconvenience and any problems could be taken care before the week starts. Notably, the new ring-fenced bank, Barclays Bank UK PLC, will be headed by Ashok Vaswani.

The new entity has 24 million customers, with £250 billion in assets. For the next three years, the old codes will work and customers will not notice any change as all the standing orders will be automatically redirected. In the meantime, customers will receive their new cheque books with codes.

In fact, Britain’s other major banks like Lloyds Banking Group (LYG - Free Report) , HSBC Holdings (HSBC - Free Report) and Royal Bank of Scotland are also required to ring fence their banks.

The ring-fencing regulation is expected to create a wide range of strategic and operational issues for legal and commercial functions within U.K. banks. It will have implications for arrangements relating to tax, real estate, employment, pensions, third-party contracts and litigation, and will affect each of the large U.K. banks differently.

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have rallied 15.4% over the last six months, outperforming the industry’s gain of 1.4%.  You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



 

Can Hackers Put Money INTO Your Portfolio?

Earlier this year, credit bureau Equifax announced a massive data breach affecting 2 out of every 3 Americans. The cybersecurity industry is expanding quickly in response to this and similar events. But some stocks are better investments than others.

Zacks has just released Cybersecurity! An Investor’s Guide to help Zacks.com readers make the most of the $170 billion per year investment opportunity created by hackers and other threats. It reveals 4 stocks worth looking into right away.

Download the new report now>>


See More Zacks Research for These Tickers


Normally $25 each - click below to receive one report FREE:


Barclays PLC (BCS) - free report >>

Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LYG) - free report >>

HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC) - free report >>

Published in