Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services. Company operates in over 60 countries and employs over 78,000 people.

            Red = 25 day moving average.           Green = 200 day moving average.

Evolution ups Barclays TP to 485p from 423p, stays on buy
Business Financial Newswire

3rd quarter results due in a week or so, will BARC (dare to) declare a dividend?

Already committed to small payment in December, so lots of egg on face if they don't. Results should be very good, although no doubt sensitive to political issues at present. Their public face not helped imo by recent deal with Protium (ex Barclays Capital employees) to buy shedload of "toxic" assets at todays distressed prices - with loan from Barclays. Seemed to me that upside lies mostly with Protium, to the detriment of shareholders, but wdik.

partridge apart from off-loading toxic assets they have also shed a number of very expensive (bonus driven) people, so it looks like a good deal to us.

Barclays buys Standard Life bank for 226m

Interim Management Statement

Performance Summary
Profit before tax for the nine months ended 30th September 2009 of 4,542m
Excluding movement on own credit, gains on acquisitions and disposals and gains on debt buy-backs, profit before tax increased 116% from 2,046m to 4,413m
Income for the nine months up 26% year on year
Positive cost:income jaws of 7%
Annualised loan loss rate of 136 basis points on a constant balance sheet and foreign exchange basis, compared to 144 basis points for the first half; impairment for the full year currently expected to be around the bottom end of the previously referenced 2009 consensus range of 9.0bn to 9.6bn
Continued strengthening of capital and liquidity positions

Interim dividend of 1p per share

Overall I am disappointed with these results - and had hoped for at least 3p by way of dividend. Bankers preach the maxim of "Sales are vanity, profits are sanity" and looks imo that they should practice what they preach.

From J P Morgan today:
"Overall, this is an exceptionally - one might almost say unnecessarily - messy statement. The use of qualitative commentary for 9M periods is especially unhelpful, and the level of disclosure bears poor comparison with RBS last week. What seems to be emerging is that the big driver of Barclays' performance in recent years, BarCap, has stalled, but, on a more positive note, the provisions are better. The stock has underperformed the European sector by 8% over the past month and 11% over the past quarter, and does not look expensive on 1.0x 10E P/NAV. However, the unclear message in the statement, together with the weakness at BarCap, will unsettle the market, and we also believe that Barclays has a material capital deficit (11.8bn.) to address. We remain UW, target price 280p."

As with all banks (and other companies come to that) it's what they "don't say" as much as what they do IMHO.

BARC is having to steadily "chomp" through its portfolio of bad debts like other banks, it will take at least another year before this process is over,unless of course the property market takes a dive.

These are going down to 260pence soon.

YOU AND I HOPE///

NOt so far away 275pence,did you get back in?

Good buying oppertunity Dubai scare will be sorted. I am in.

Bob Diamond sells 5m of Barclays shares

Bob Diamond, Barclays president and head of its investment bank, has sold 5m worth of shares in the company, the first time he has reduced his multi-million pound stake since joining the bank in 1996.

The sale in two transactions was to "manage his personal portfolio" according to a Barclays spokesperson.

According to the announcement late on Wednesday, he sold 2.7m worth of shares at 275p on Tuesday and a further 2.3m at 277p on Wednesday. The disposal follows a 78pc rise in Barclay's share price so far this year. Barclays closed down 3.05 at 275p.

The sale comes at a sensitive time for Barclays. Although the bank did not have to go the Government for a bail-out during the financial crisis, it sold a 5.8bn stake to Qatar and Abu Dhabi investors last year in a deal that enraged many shareholders.

The bank followed that up by selling its fund management arm, Barclays Global Investors, to BlackRock in June this year for 8.2bn, a deal which is understood to have reaped a multi-million pay-out for Mr Diamond.

Are you still short here, hlyeo? 260 looks to be slight support level.

Bob Diamond is selling, that doesn't boost much confidence, I should say.

hlyeo that's fine except you failed to mention that Diamond still has a beneficial interest in over 8 million shares.

Probably Diamond is starting to sell more now.

Also stops being hit possibly?