barclays will ge coming out with trading update on 07.05.2009 It is expected to report profits higher than market expectations.

A good Buy Medium to Long term

From the FT.com..........

LONDON (Dow Jones)--U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequor Alistair Darling is under pressure to prove the U.K. is serious about cleaning up the toxic bank balance sheets, after missing the summer deadline for signing insurance deals with Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (RBS.LN) and Lloyds Banking Group PLC (LLOY.LN) worth GBP585 billion, the Financial Times reports Monday.

Darling has told officials to accelerate work on finalizing the deals, fearing that delays could undermine the U.K.'s ability to lecture other countries on the need for urgent action to clean up their banks at September's Group of 20 leading industrialized and developing nations summit in Pittsburgh.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's team is growing irritated that RBS and Lloyds still haven't signed legal deals under the government's flagship asset protection scheme, in spite of agreeing their participation in principle in March.

Full story: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/40743398-7fa7-11de-85dc-00144feabdc0.html

09:26 September 17th, 2009
Barclays risky assets move a little too cozy

Barclays has come up with an interesting way to solve an optical problem. Concerned that the banks shareholders are nervous about possible future writedowns of wobbly assets with a value of $12.3 billion, it has sold them to its own employees.

This isnt necessarily a bad idea. But there are two things to dislike about this deal. First, it looks pretty cozy to sell to your own workers. And second, the deal looks potentially very favourable for the purchasers.

The deal does not remove the assets from Barclays balance sheet. What it does is allow the bank to pull them out of its mark-to-market book, where their carrying value is contingent upon the financial health of some monolines with whom Barclays has taken out credit insurance.

To do this it makes a loan to an entity, which then buys these assets. The loan still sits on Barclays books but does not have to marked to market. Even so its value is ultimately still tied to the performance of the assets.

This, the bank argues, will allow the shareholders to sleep easily at nights, knowing that a credit downgrade at some obscure monoline will no longer bring writedowns crashing down upon their heads.

This may seem fair enough. But to achieve this optically pleasing outcome, the bank has cut a deal that offers real upside for Protium Finance the entity that has purchased the assets and a group of its own ex-employees that will manage them.
Whole article here

Bb
i read "optical problem"and "optically pleasing outcome". i suppose optical can have or suggest different things to different people.i.e relating to that which pertains to sight,
so maybe that which we can see as a problem may perhaps disappear if we are no longer able to see it.well it would wouldnt it?( i.e. out of sight out of mind)
maybe others might see or read that problem which is very real,as being solved by that other word which seems to go and fit so well with the word optical, being the word illusion.
so can we solve the clearly seen and real problem by creating an "optical illusion" through "creative" yet legal accounting and reporting?
is barclays alone in attempting to do this? or not? or are they the first to break cover? everyones at it,... in my opinion,. dyor. dont mean it wont work.doent make it right though or does it? lets all sleep easy in our illusions.as long as price goes up nothing else matters. or does it?
regards
jkd

jkd
better to be aware that it's happening and ready to take profit when it all comes crashing down imo.. :))

Was suprised to see such a bullish set of Broker forecasts for Barclays PLC, look at all the BUY recos.....

Barclays PLC

FORECASTS
2009 2010

Date Rec Pre-tax () EPS (p) DPS (p) Pre-tax () EPS (p) DPS (p)

WestLB
11-12-09 NEUT 3.00 8.00

Shore Capital
11-12-09 BUY 6,025.00 27.30 4.00 5,992.00 27.10 10.00

Exane BNP Paribas
11-12-09 BUY 6,078.00 51.98 4.00 6,806.00 33.51 8.00

SG Securities
09-12-09 BUY 21.44 3.00 25.89 8.00

Oriel Securities
09-12-09 BUY 68.10 5.00 41.20 5.30

Keefe Bruyette & Woods Ltd [D]
07-12-09 OUTP 26.20 22.50

Evolution Securities Ltd
07-12-09 BUY 12,440.00 25.50 2.50 7,277.00 35.85 8.96

Charles Stanley
04-12-09 HOLD

NCB Stockbrokers Ltd
02-12-09 BUY 6,410.00 24.60 2.00 8,155.00 36.86 8.00

Nomura Research Institute
17-11-09 BUY 4,679.00 22.00 2.50 5,010.00 24.00 5.00

ING Financial Markets
13-11-09 HOLD 11.32 2.00 18.01 5.00

ABN AMRO [D]
02-10-09 BUY 2,026.40 6.87 2.00 4,601.87 20.84 5.26


2009 2010
Pre-tax () EPS (p) DPS (p) Pre-tax () EPS (p) DPS (p)

Consensus 5,822.55 24.23 3.21 6,700.66 30.70 8.25
1 Month Change 927.14 -3.42 -0.27 949.89 3.26 0.25
3 Month Change 2007.63 6.13 -0.35 1330.71 8.76 1.75

Notes to forecasts
D flag: Panmure assumes that BGI disposal will help both the reported earnings and the capital ratios in 2009 but their concerns are for longer term and relate to sustainability of the remaining Group's earnings


GROWTH
2008 (A) 2009 (E) 2010 (E)

Norm. EPS -64.64% 31.72% 26.70%
DPS 9.13% -90.56% 157.01%

INVESTMENT RATIOS
2008 (A) 2009 (E) 2010 (E)

Dividend Yield 11.81% 1.12% 2.86%

Dividend Cover 0.54x 7.55x 3.72x

PER 15.66x 11.89x 9.38x

PEG -0.24f 0.38f 0.35f

Net Asset Value PS 294.18p 352.31p 360.53p

amazing how banks in general seem able to "suddenly" become so highly profitable that huge bonuses are the order of the day once again.how do they do it?
dyor, i know you do gf.
regards to you
jkd

Cheers jkd.

Must admit they seem to have pulled themselves around pretty quickly and if this is 100% correct at the present SP BARC are a steal as the above brokers would indicate.

Went long mid of last week both these and LLOY as I had heard rumours of the bail out of dubai and thought banks would get an uplift.

gf
steals, as i am sure you know, are very rare
i have my doubts on this one but could be wrong.
good luck
regards
jkd

New Broker note out today...

Barclays Financial Buy 398 284.15 40.1% AlphaValue

Broker sees 40.1% upside to 398p.

market doesn't seem to agree sp 267p ,where's the bottom....maybe 250p?

happens end of december, those risen a lot will fall as dealers square positions and bank profits for the year figures. Will most likey rise again come new yr

Think that sentiment still against the banks - there is also the threat of political interference with election looming and bank bashing always likely to find a few votes. Fundamentals for BARC, however, look to be improving so if you are lucky enough to catch the falling knife at the right time the gains could be rapid. I am a long term holder.

Barclays faces 17bn shortfall

Interesting reading skinny.
If that's the case for BARC what about RBS and LLOY? They have already gone to the market but I can't see how they could be expected to increase their capital any further. Doesn't bear thinking about. Unless of course these requirements were included in their last capital raising schemes.

These are merely proposals being hyped by journos, cross the bridge when you come to it.

wrong thread but you will all see:

Bank of America loses $5.2bn20-01-2010 12:48


Bank of America posted a more than doubled fourth quarter net loss of $5.2bn as the cost of repaying its TARP bail-out cash took its toll.

Losses per share came in at 60c against market forecasts of 52c. Stripping out TARP, there was a net loss for the quarter of $194m, down from $1.8bn.

There an additional provision for credit losses of $10.1bn, though this was $1.6bn lower than the third quarter but $1.6bn higher than the same period a year earlier.

Non-interest income was up sharply due to an improvement in trading and significantly higher income from investment and brokerage services, equity investments and investment banking, it added.

"While it's disappointing to report a loss for the fourth quarter, there were a number of important accomplishments worth noting," said chief executive Brian T. Moynihan.

"First, we repaid the American taxpayer, with interest, for the TARP investment. Second, we have taken steps to strengthen our balance sheet through successful securities offerings. And third, all of our non-credit businesses recorded positive contributions to our result," he said.

For the full year, BoA lost $2.2bn against a profit of $2.56bn, while losses per share were 29c against earnings of 54c.

US open: Wall Street tumbles20-01-2010 15:11


The Dow dropped more than 100 points in the first five minutes of trading as investors consider a mixed bag of company results and fresh economic data.

Across the market, the Dow Jones is down 177 at 10,548, the Nasdaq Composite is off 43 at 2,278, while the broader S&P 500 has fallen 18 points to 1,133.

On the economic front, housing starts fell 4% to a 557,000 unit annual rate in December. Economists only expected a drop to 572,000.

Elsewhere, building permits beat forecasts, rising to a 653,000 unit annual rate last month from 589,000 in November.

The Producer Price Index increased 0.2% in December after climbing 1.8% in the previous month.

Banks are also dominating early trading after Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon and Morgan Stanley all issued fourth quarter figures before the bell.

A strong performance from its asset management and wealth management arms helped Bank of New York Mellon swing into the black in the fourth quarter, offsetting weakness in the core lending arm.

The bank reported ongoing fourth quarter income of $712m, or $0.59c per share, compared with $50m, or $0.04, in the fourth quarter of 2008 and a loss of $2.44bn, or $2.04, in the third quarter of 2009.

Bank of America posted a more than doubled fourth quarter net loss of $5.2bn as the cost of repaying its TARP bail-out cash took its toll.

Losses per share came in at 60c against market forecasts of 52c. Stripping out TARP, there was a net loss for the quarter of $194m, down from $1.8bn.

Wells Fargo's fourth-quarter net income came to $2.82bn, or 8c a share, compared with a loss of $2.73bn, or 84c a share, last year. Wells said earnings per share were reduced by 47c to pay dividends on the government's stake in the company.

Earnings from Morgan Stanley came in below market expectations. Earnings from continuing operations in the fourth quarter were $413m, or 14 cents a share. The median value of earnings per share forecasts from analysts was 42 cents.

Revenue tumbled to $6.84bn from $8.43bn in the third quarter.

Away from the banks, IT services company IBM reported better than expected fourth quarter earnings and revenues after the bell yesterday. The company upgraded its earnings guidance for the full year to at least $11 per share.

Good news for defensive outfits in the next couple of days over hear IMHO.

got caught with a few VED, so in the hope that gold recovers soon have bought somemore to average down a bit.

Averaging down is dangerous, Gold! Good luck.