British bank Barclays said first-quarter profit rose 15 per cent as strong growth at its investment banking arm made up for a big jump in bad debts as economies worsen, sending its shares to a seven-month high.
Trading in April had been “generally consistent with the overall trend for February and March after an exceptional January,” Britain's third biggest bank said on today.
Barclays made a January-March pretax profit of £1.37 billion ($2.1 billion). Profit at Barclays Capital jumped 361 per cent to £907 million, driven by growth in the United States after the acquisition of Lehman Brothers' US operations last year.
The results echoed the strong start to the year by rivals, including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and BNP Paribas, as banks have benefited from a revival in capital markets activity after the torrid end to 2008, with many grabbing business where troubled rivals have retreated.
The results implied Barclays' quarterly profit excluding writedowns was near £2.5 billion, said Jonathan Pierce, analyst at Credit Suisse.
“We suspect this is by far and away the best quarter Barclays has ever had,” he said.
Mr Pierce said that the performance of Barclays Capital should drive up profit forecasts and that he expected to double his 2010 pretax forecast to about £5 billion.
Barclays said impairment charges and other credit provisions jumped to £2.31 billion from £1.29 billion. About half of that rise was due to growth and currency movements, and half was due to a worsening economy and maturation of loans.
The bank said the loan loss rate would likely increase across all its business lines and it was assuming its 2009 annualised loan loss rate would be at the upper end of its indicated range of 1.3 to 1.5 per cent. The annualised rate was 1.31 per cent in the first quarter.
Net losses from credit market writedowns more than doubled during the quarter to £2.15 billion. Gross writedowns hit £2.61 billion, before hedges and gains on its own debt.