2016 Full Year Results
Barclays has published its 2016 Full Year Results.
Jes Staley, Group CEO said: “A year ago we laid out our intention to accelerate the restructuring of Barclays and refocus our business as a transatlantic, consumer, corporate and investment bank, anchored in London and New York.
We have made strong progress against this agenda in 2016.
Our Core businesses, Barclays UK and Barclays International, are doing well, with profit before tax excluding notable items up 4% to £6.4bn.
Barclays UK produced an impressive underlying RoTE of 19.3%, and continues to deliver market-leading innovation for customers, including voice security, contactless cash, a new direct investing platform, and in airing the first fraud prevention TV ad campaign from a major UK bank.
Barclays International delivered an underlying RoTE of 8.0%. We brought further focus to the Corporate and Investment Bank, with income growing 6%, solidifying our position in the bulge bracket. We also saw strong growth in Consumer, Cards and Payments, as income increased 21%, driven by improvements in all key businesses.
Combined, the Core RoTE, excluding notable items, was 9.4%.
Accelerating the closure of Barclays Non-Core is a key part of realising the potential of Barclays. In 2016 we reduced Non-Core RWAs by £22bn, with £12bn of that reduction coming in the final quarter alone. Today, we are announcing that we will close Non-Core on 30 June 2017, six months earlier than previously targeted.
We reduced our ownership of Barclays Africa with an initial sale of 12.2% in May. In the fourth quarter we agreed with local management and submitted to regulators our proposed separation arrangements for Barclays Africa. This is a key milestone before a further reduction in our stake at the appropriate time.
The progress on our priorities resulted in organic profit generation which strengthened our CET1 capital ratio by 100 basis points in 2016 to 12.4%. This puts us well on track to meet our end state target and we are well positioned to absorb headwinds over the next few years. Certain legacy conduct issues remain and we intend to make further progress on them.
In short, we have accomplished a lot in a year, and I am thankful to each and every one of our colleagues who have made this possible. Their efforts mean that, in 2017, we can begin to move on from the restructuring of Barclays, shifting our focus solely to the future, and in particular to how we can generate attractive, sustainable, and distributable, returns for our shareholders.
This means increasing management focus on Barclays UK and Barclays International, the future of this firm. Together, they encompass a diverse set of market leading consumer and wholesale businesses, giving us growth opportunities across a wide waterfront, and resilience in earnings.
And we intend to build these businesses on a foundation of world class operations and technology, where core functions for our Group are standardised across the company, streamlining costs, driving high quality analytics, and hugely improving the experience of our customers and clients, which is key to driving loyalty and long term growth.
We are now just months away from completing the restructuring of Barclays, and I am more optimistic than ever for our prospects in 2017, and beyond.”