Category Archives: Barclays

Barclays accused of greenwashing over financing for Italian oil company

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Exclusive: Environmental groups say bank is misleading public over ‘sustainable’ financing for Eni as company vastly expands fossil fuel production

Barclays is being accused by environmental groups of greenwashing after helping to arrange €4bn (£3.4bn) in financing for the Italian oil company Eni in a way that allows them to qualify towards its $1tn sustainable financing goal.

Environmental groups have said the London-based bank is deliberately misleading the public by labelling the financial instruments as “sustainable” at the same time that Eni is in the midst of a multibillion-pound fossil fuel expansion drive designed to increase production.

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Barclays profits tumble 12% as UK interest rates hit mortgage demand

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Pre-tax profits drop to £2.3bn between January and March, down from £2.6bn last year

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Profits at Barclays tumbled 12% in the first quarter, as higher UK interest rates weighed on demand for mortgages and loans and its investment bank was hit by a backdrop of economic uncertainty.

The UK bank said pre-tax profits fell to £2.3bn in the first quarter, down from £2.6bn last year, when it reported the strongest quarterly profit since 2011 after a string of interest rate hikes by the Bank of England.

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UK students launch Barclays ‘career boycott’ over bank’s climate policies

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Campaign at leading universities such as Oxbridge and UCL warns lender it will miss out on top talent if it finances fossil fuels

Hundreds of students from leading UK universities have launched a “career boycott” of Barclays over its climate policies, warning that the bank will miss out on top talent unless it stops financing fossil fuel companies.

More than 220 students from Barclays’ top recruitment universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, and University College London have sent a letter to the high street lender, saying they will not work for Barclays and raising the alarm over its funding for oil and gas firms including Shell, TotalEnergies, Exxon and BP.

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Cambridge University reportedly could drop Barclays in favour of greener bank

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UK lender is a major European funder of oil and gas projects and university has said it does not want to back fossil fuel expansion

Cambridge University could cut ties with Barclays after more than 200 years over the bank’s refusal to stop financing new oil and gas projects, according to the Financial Times.

It reported that Cambridge is looking for an institution with robust climate policies to manage “several hundred million pounds” in cash and money market funds – a mandate expected to cover more than £200m in assets and generate about £10m in fees a year.

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UK recession fears grow as shoppers cut spending ‘to save for Christmas’

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Drop in retail sales also because of consumer worries over high energy bills and mortgages, surveys suggest

Fears that the UK is heading for a recession this winter have intensified amid signs Britain’s hard-pressed households are cutting spending as they save for Christmas and higher fuel bills.

Two monthly snapshots of retail activity found shops and online outlets struggling because of consumer budgets being squeezed by dearer mortgages and the UK’s lingering cost of living crisis.

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Filipino activists appeal to British banks over region devastated by oil spill

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Environmentalists from the Philippines urge investors to avoid LNG projects which they say threaten the Verde Island Passage

Campaigners from the Philippines have urged British banks not to fund the expansion of fossil fuel use in their country. It follows a huge oil spill that threatened a globally important marine biodiversity hotspot.

Filipino environmentalists have travelled to the UK to meet representatives from Barclays, Standard Chartered and HSBC as part of efforts to stop the expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plants and terminals in and around the Verde Island Passage, a global marine biodiversity hotspot known for its whale sharks, corals, turtles and rich fisheries, which was badly affected by the oil spill this year.

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Climate protesters rework Spice Girls song to disrupt Barclays AGM

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Lyrics of Stop changed to ‘stop right now, no more oil and gas’ because of bank’s fossil fuel funding

Barclays’ annual general meeting has been disrupted by climate activists condemning the bank’s role as one of Europe’s largest funders of fossil fuels – including a choir singing a Spice Girls hit with reworked lyrics.

Dozens of activists from groups including Fossil Free London and Extinction Rebellion UK began their action less than five minutes into the meeting where its chair, Nigel Higgins, was addressing shareholders at the QEII Centre in Westminster, central London.

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Old ghosts of Staley – and Epstein – haunt Barclays once again

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A new lawsuit against its former boss does not involve the bank, but awkward questions may be asked at this week’s AGM

Barclays could be forgiven for thinking it was out of the woods after parting ways with its chief executive, Jes Staley, in 2021, amid regulators’ concerns over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

At the time, the board – which had already backed the boss over a separate whistleblower scandal in 2018 – seemed assured by Staley’s account of events. The bank even expressed disappointment over his departure as he prepared to challenge a (yet-to-be-released) UK investigation into the way he had characterised his ties to the disgraced financier.

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UK and US shares climb as banks and ministers aim to calm Credit Suisse fears

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FTSE 100 rises and European banking shares are up after early jitters over what UBS takeover deal means for bondholders

Stocks climbed on Monday in London and New York after central bankers and politicians sought to soothe jitters triggered by the emergency rescue of Credit Suisse during the weekend.

Central banks in the UK and eurozone issued statements aimed at reassuring investors that – unlike the controversial approach taken by the Swiss authorities in the Credit Suisse deal – their jurisdictions would follow a hierarchy in which equity holders would lose out before bond holders.

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FTSE 100 firms hand billions in dividend payouts to Qatar investors

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Critics say everyday UK consumer spending has funnelled billions to controversial World Cup host since 2010

Some of the UK’s largest listed companies including water and energy giants have handed almost £500m to Qatari state-owned investors this year, raising concerns that blue-chip company profits are supporting the controversial World Cup host.

The dividend payouts are the result of the Gulf nation’s investments in a raft of FTSE 100 firms, including Barclays, Shell and utility firm Severn Trent, which have reported strong profits amid a cost of living crisis and the worst UK drought in centuries.

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Barclays could be fined £50m for failing to disclose 2008 Qatari deal

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Provisional fine relates to £322m bank paid to Gulf state allegedly in exchange for £4bn investment to save lender from bailout

The City watchdog could fine Barclays up to £50m for failing to disclose a deal struck with Qatar at the height of the financial crisis, reviving a controversial episode that failed to gain traction in UK courts.

The provisional fine – which Barclays is in the process of appealing against – relates to the £322m the bank paid to Qatar in 2008, allegedly in exchange for the gas-rich Gulf state investing £4bn, helping save the lender from a UK government bailout.

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Banks stand to lose at least $500m if they fund Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover

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Morgan Stanley and six others committed in April to raise $13bn in debt to finance the purchase – before a deterioration in credit markets

Several large US and international banks would lose $500m or more if they proceed with obligations to fund Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of Twitter, according to a report on Saturday.

The banks, led by Morgan Stanley and six others, including Barclays and Bank of America, committed six months ago to raise $13bn in debt to finance Musk’s purchase – an agreement that does not hinge on whether they are able to sell the debt on to investors.

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Vote down executive pay at Barclays and Standard Chartered, investors told

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Rebellions loom as Glass Lewis advises banks’ shareholders to reject higher base pay and excessive pensions

Barclays and Standard Chartered face the prospect of rebellions over executive pay after an influential adviser said investors should vote down pay and pensions packages for executives at the FTSE 100 banks.

Investors should defy directors and reject higher base pay for Barclays’ new chief executive and potentially “excessive” pension awards at Standard Chartered, according to Glass Lewis, which advises investors such as pension funds on how to vote at annual meetings.

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Jes Staley: account of relationship with Epstein comes under scrutiny

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Regulators will compare the version of events he shared with Barclays with emails from JP Morgan

When it was revealed last year that Jes Staley had sailed his luxury yacht to a meeting with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on his private Caribbean island, the Barclays boss told colleagues he was “going nowhere”.

But on Monday Staley resigned as chief executive of Barclays after the board said it had been made aware of the preliminary conclusions of an investigation by City regulators into how he had characterised his relationship with Epstein to Barclays. Staley intends to contest the report’s findings.

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European banks storing €20bn a year in tax havens

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Barclays and HSBC among banks booking money equivalent to 14% of annual profits in offshore entities

Leading European banks are booking around €20bn (£17bn) a year – equivalent to 14% of their total profits – in tax havens, with Barclays, HSBC and NatWest Group among those enjoying the lowest tax rates, according to a new report.

The figures emerge from an analysis, conducted by the EU Tax Observatory, of 36 big banks required to publicly report country-by-country data on their activities.

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Amanda Staveley in tears as Barclays lawyer accuses her of ‘hustle’

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Businesswoman is seeking £1.5bn from bank in high court action over £2bn Qatari loan

A businesswoman embroiled in a £1.5bn high court battle with Barclays broke down in tears after bank bosses accused her of engaging in a “hustle”.

Amanda Staveley has made complaints about bank bosses’ behaviour when negotiating investment deals during the 2008 financial crisis.

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Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds among UK banks that had links to slavery

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Many bank directors received compensation after slavery was made illegal in 1833

The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 but it was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act finally banned the ownership of other human beings. However, 46,000 slave owners continued to benefit financially as the subsequent Slave Compensation Act provided £20m in payments – a sum worth billions in 2020 terms. Despite the name of the act, the former slaves were not compensated.

University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project shows that 10% to 20% of Britain’s wealthy can be identified as having had significant links to slavery. The amount of money borrowed to pay off slave owners was so large that the government only repaid it fully in 2015. Companies with links to slavery in their past include:

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UK Finance boss resigns as Amanda Staveley high court case continues

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Ex-Barclays executive Stephen Jones says he apologised over alleged sexist remarks referred to in court documents

The boss of the banking lobby group UK Finance has resigned just weeks before his alleged sexist remarks about the financier Amanda Staveley are due to be revealed in the high court.

Stephen Jones, a senior Barclays executive during the financial crisis who became the first chief executive of UK Finance in 2017, said he had also apologised to Staveley and the body’s staff about the comments, which were made as the bank scrambled to save itself from nationalisation in 2008.

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Ending the Iranian sanctions waiver could be own goal for Trump

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Preventing Iran’s oil from reaching the market will raise oil prices and US business costs

The past two and a bit years have shown that it is naive to expect Donald Trump’s strategic and economic policies to demonstrate coherence. Even so, the lack of joined-up thinking in the decision to end the waiver against sanctions from nations that buy oil from Iran takes some beating.

Related: US toughens stance on Iran, ending exemptions from oil sanctions

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