British bank Barclays said today it is confident of meeting expectations for 4 per cent earnings growth this year.
Britain's third-biggest bank said it should deliver a 2007 pretax profit of £7.1 billion, up from underlying profit of £6.8 billion in 2006.
Earlier this morning, Barclays shares were up 4.5 per cent at 520 pence, the top performing FTSE 100 stock, as analysts welcomed an improvement in impairment trends and no deterioration at the Barclays Capital investment banking arm.
Barclays said its liquidity remained strong and it continued to see good inflows of deposits. Its performance in the first nine months of this year was underpinned by "good" profit growth in UK retail after the impact of refunds on bank charges and at asset manager Barclays Global Investors.
It also said that bad debts at Barclaycard and for UK unsecured lending continued to improve.
The bank had already said its Barclays Capital investment bank unit would take a £1.3 billion writedown for losses on securities linked to the US subprime housing crisis.