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.

It's amazing how market sentiment changes so quickly, Friday all doom and gloom with Financials leading market down, today Financials are all positive leading market up. The reason is an article in The Times saying barc, lloy will raise the dividends this week, this had already been widely anticipated since November.

I believe Banks will have to come clean this time, and I think they will, tomorrow will be very interesting for barc, I believe another 1.5bn w/o is anticipated (correct me is I'm wrong)

Remember 9th Nov when barc was temporary suspended because of wild speculation of 10bn w/o, which in the event turned out to be only 1.3bn. For what it's worth I believe US banks have talked upped the size of UK banks sub prime exposure, and would hope to see this confirmed tomorrow.

Barclays FY profit down 1 pct
AFX


LONDON (Thomson Financial) - UK bank Barclays reported a 1 pct decline in its 2007 profit, still slightly ahead of analysts' estimates, held back by the impact of the global credit crunch.

Barclays, the UK's third-biggest bank, said its total pretax profit for the year to Dec 31 2007 came in at 7.076 bln stg, down from 7.136 bln stg the previous year.

Analysts had expected profit of 6.993 bln stg, according to a consensus forecast supplied by the company.

The decline compared with 2006 partly reflects 1.8 bln stg of asset write-downs triggered by the credit crunch which Barclays reported last November.

'Barclays delivered a resilient performance in 2007, with profits broadly in

line with the record prior year results,' chief executive John Varley said in a statement.

'The strength of our diversified businesses gives us confidence for the period ahead.'

Barclays is paying a final dividend of 22.5 pence per share, taking the full payout for the year to 34 pence, an increase of 10 pct.

Barclays shares closed at 456 pence yesterday, valuing the group at about 30.25 bln stg.

tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomson.com

when does it go ex-div?

2 days ago.

And very nice it was too. LLoy and RSB the same day. Lucky! Three of a kind.

thanks Stan, paid in May i think

so what do the papers know??

at the w/e, there was comment that most short positions had now been closed and that BARC would come in with better results than feared and no rights issue to be announced when they give a trading update on 15th.

excellent (for me!) move south, so whereas i was almost scared out of my short, i am now well in the money, though shall now watch with a view to banking that profit

FTSE starting to recover a bit as is BARC so banked my profit

I think the banks will drop further...the credit crunch is still not over yet. It is just the end of the beginning. Housing market still shows no sign of recovery, inflation going upward, oil price rocketing and people are losing their jobs in the City.

SELL the banks.

the market looks about 6 months forward, so going short at this juncture is quite a brave call ...... also, crude is due for a sharp correction

Inclined to agree Cynic, but as a holder of BARC awaiting news on Thursday with some unease. Hope they bite the bullet and personally I would welcome scaling down of Barclays Capital activities, for therein imo lies the source of most of their problems. Basic banking on personal/corporate front still a first class cash cow, even if market mature in UK at least.

somewhat at a tangent, i reckon Deutsche Bank has some pretty severe problems as i keep coming across reports of it selling swathes of shares in various companies

LONDON, May 15 (Reuters) - British bank Barclays said profits fell in the first quarter after it took a 1 billion pound ($1.95 billion) writedown on assets tarnished by the credit crunch.
Britain's third-biggest bank said on Thursday the writedown for Barclays Capital was net of a 700 million pound gain on the fair valuation of debt it carries on its own books. The writedown was less than the hit taken by many other banks.
The bank did not disclose the extent of its profit fall. It expects its core tier 1 capital ratio to be slightly lower at the end of June than the 5.1 percent it reported at the end of 2007, but intends to lift it to its 5.25 percent target "in time".



suspect the market will take that with relative equanimity, especially as no rights issue announced

No news hopefully good news, but size of some of their assets relative to the bank's capital base still leaves me a bit nervous. At least they are making efforts to manage some of it down.

Barclays Bank has not reveal the extent of its profit fall. Sounds very suspicious to me and also give scrip dividend. This are useless.

I expect BARC to fall below 390p.

Wrong Barclays has stated it will pay a cash dividend as it considers scip dividends as not real dividends. One in the eye for RBS perhaps!

Suspect there is quite a lot going on behind the scenes re capital adequacy position and it is looking like something other than retained profits will be needed. Underlying trading of core banking business still looks strong, but an element of the falling knife about present share price situation. As a longer term investor (and have held various amounts of BARC for 40 years) I am happy to sit tight for the time being.

Seems like a nice little rise today and looking at the chart MACD seems to closing and RSI is oversold

partridge - Quite agree with your remarks. I have been trading and investing in BARC since 1961 and have a large holding. Have seen share price well down in the early 1970's, 1987, 1998 etc. and just continued to hold and they have subsequently recovered to a higher level. In hindsight I wish I had sold the lot at 794!! but being a bit greedy was looking for further rises and, at that time, people were talking about 1000+. Should have sold some over the last 12 months as the price fell but did not want to reduce my holding just to see the drop reversed and the price fly up. Anyway I feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel now and hope that things will look a lot better in a few months' time. Good luck to all BARC investors & traders.

at 375 or a bit lower, BARC are prob a reasonable/good buy, even though the markets remain pretty soggy overall