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Let's turn our attention to another big bank, Barclays's reporting numbers, the first of the major UK banks to drop its numbers onto our screens. Let's talk about the numbers before we get to Venkat Investment Bank revenue for the fourth quarter two point sixty one billion, that is ahead of estimates. Pre tax profits also higher than expected at one point
sixty six billion. The bank has announced a further share buy backs, but a share buy back this morning ces n Kata Christian joining us now at the Barclays CEO, always the pleasure of Vencak. Good morning. The numbers are better than anticipated this time last year. You announced new targets, you announced new returns to shareholders. He gave the banker boost. Are you ahead with this set of numbers one year on the way you thought you would be?
Look, I'm very happy with the results we have demonstrated. If you look at our profits this year for twenty twenty four, it's eight point one billion pounds. It's twenty four percent ahead of the numbers for twenty three. It's based on a six percent growth in revenue, one percent reduction in cost holding impairments flat. If you look more broadly at what we laid out in that three year plan to which you referred, you know, are rote this year we guide it to greater than ten percent. We
printed ten point five percent. We announced that greater than ten billion pounds worth of share buybacks and dividends over the next three years twenty four to twenty five, twenty six. And with this share buyback we announced today we've done three billion for this year and we are rebalancing the bank we are. You know, we've deployed about thirteen billion pounds of order WA's into our UK facing businesses. That's about it's more than a third of the thirty billion
we've planned. And the Investment Bank, which was fifty eight percent of the bank in order Wa terms a year ago, is now fifty six on its way to fifty which is our target. So so far, so.
Good, Vick.
We've just been having a conversation with Betina Rollo, the CEO of Comets Bank. She's targeting on rite returnal tangible equacy of fifteen percent by twenty twenty eight. Do you think Barclays could achieve some number similar to that? How high could that figure go? You've got unicredits in the kind of in the high teens. Now, does Barclays have work to do on that number?
Well, we already have businesses that are performing well above that. So if you look at the announcement today, our Barclay's UK business has produced twenty three percent our ote for the last year. Our UK corporate bank is in the mid teens, I think sixteen percent. Our private banking and wealth isn't the high twenties. It all depends on the mix, and we are shifting the bank in terms of mix to the higher returning businesses. We've also said that we've
put out a plan till twenty twenty six. Twenty twenty six is not an end date, it's a point in time and we'll look forward from there.
We had it's creedy in London. Talk to us a little bit about your trading revenue here. I mean, it's not a secret that all the banks on both sides of the Atlantic have gotten a little bit of a boost driven by the volatility from the Trump administration. How long do you expect that to last as we start to see a little bit more complacency creeping into these markets.
Yeah, Well, the markets, as you said, Kritie have been quite volatile towards the fourth quarter of last year, which we've reported, and it's stretched into the first quarter of this year. It gives opportunities for our equity businesses. Where I'm standing on the equity floor, and our equity business over twenty twenty four was an outperformer, as was our securitised products business, and we've been gaining market share with clients.
Those are the structural things I look for, and it's a structural performance we try to create, and then we'll take advantage of cyclical factors as and when they come. But our plan is based on a very conservative estimate of what the market wallet will be.
Let's stick with the Trump theme, perhaps from a different angle here. There's a big expectation in these markets and in these banks that the deregulatory agenda from the United States is going to have a spillover effect into Europe and into the UK, even pushing some of the regulators on this side of the pond into loosening some of those strings. How are you thinking about that? Is that spillover effects something you're seeing tangibly in the first few days of Donald Trump.
So the regulatory agenda in the US has been pretty well signaled by President Trump before he came into office, and it started to be enacted in the UK and Europe. You're already seeing in the UK examples of the government taking the line towards a more fairly balanced regulatory profile. They've spoken about in the UK the Competition and Markets
Authority and what's called the Financial Ombudsman Service. I expect that you will see some rebalancing, but you know, I should say that we want the rebalancing in the context of strongly regulated markets. We think all the major banks as included good our advocates of a well regulated financial system. It's what makes London great, and so there should be some rebalancing. But in the context of a well regulated financial system.
Good morning to Banka. Sticking with the theme of what changes in the United States might bring, there's been a lot of expectation going into another Trump administration that perhaps we get more M and A, that the animal spirits argument. But then there's also a lot of uncertainty what the conversations around M and A look like.
To you, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There's a balance that's going on. On the one hand, what you've got is deregulation, which allows companies to think more confidently about whether the choices that they make will indeed be permitted by the government. Then you still have a relative stability in financial markets, both in interest rates and in credit spreads. And then lastly, though, you've got tariffs, which
introduces questions regarding particular countries in particular industries. So I think companies are going to have to balance the three and over time we will get a clearer picture. It's too soon to tell, too soon.
To sell on that one. Let me ask you, Christy was asking you about trading revenues. You talked in glowing terms about the equities team. I wonder what comments you have on FICK revenues this morning. I see that for the fourth quarter the number came in a little below what some of the analysts were looking for. Is there any explanation you can reach for their venct.
Look, the fixed income is the great strength of Barclays. It's you know, the house of Barclays was built on fixed income. We had a weaker start at the start of the year, but especially in our European rates and our macro businesses, it's been picking up through the year and into the fourth quarter. Our securitized products business in the US has been particularly strong, so I'm very confident about fixed income performance going forward.
Okay, confident about the performance. Thank you very much, Benkat, thank you for joining US. Barkley CEOCSN Category Nan with us to talk about those results this morning.