Finance

Barclays Q1 earnings 2025

Published

2 months ago

April 30, 2025

Business Finance News

16 September 2023, USA, New York: The Barclays Bank logo, taken in Manhattan.

Michael Kappeler | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

British bank Barclays on Wednesday reported slight beats on the top and bottom line, boosted by stronger investment bank performance.

Pre-tax profit came in at £2.7 billion ($3.6 billion) over the March quarter, compared with analyst expectations of £2.49 billion, according to LSEG. Group revenues hit £7.7 billion, above an analyst projection of £7.33 billion.

Income from its investment bank unit increased 16%. Barclays’ return on tangible equity, a measure of profitability, reached 14 % in the first quarter, after averaging 7.5% in the December quarter.

Key to investors is how Barclays navigates its sizable U.S. exposure in the market storm unleashed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s global trade tariffs. Notably, Barclays has had a significant presence Stateside since acquiring the investment banking and capital markets businesses of collapsed Wall Street titan Lehman Brothers for $1.75 billion.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday, Barclays CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said he was expecting “fairly high market volatility” going forward.

“It’s calmer now but I imagine it will continue to go up and down. Beyond that, as you’ve seen in our results, that market volatility helps us help clients manage their risk, we can do so in a profitable way that helps them as well and helps markets income, as long as you manage your risk well.”

Venkatakrishnan continued, “I think, going forward, the longer this goes on, the greater economic uncertainty there is, which is putting companies off from making decisions. Individuals also take time to make decisions, you could have a risk of a slowdown in economic activity.”

The British lender’s U.S. consumer bank business has made strides, delivering a 9.1% return on tangible equity in 2024, from 4.1% in 2023. Barclays shares took a steep tumble as the White House kicked off its trade war on April 2, but recovered thereafter and remain up 10% in the year to date — in sharp contrast to Swiss giant UBS, whose U.S. foothold and domestic concerns have led to a hemorrhage in stock value.

Britain could receive a rare economic boon as a result of its divorce from the European Union, after the bloc was struck with 20% in — now briefly suspended — U.S. reciprocal tariffs in early April. London, which only faces 10% in such White House levies, is now attempting to leverage its historic transatlantic relationship and a broadly more balanced trade record with the U.S. to secure a sweeter commercial arrangement.

Barclays’ pressures at homes have meanwhile eased, with behemoth HSBC announcing plans to wind down its M&A and equity capital markets businesses in the U.K., U.S. and Europe amid a revamp of its investment operations. And the British unit of Spanish lender Banco Santander — which dethroned UBS to become continental Europe’s largest bank by market capitalization in recent weeks — in March said that 750 of its staff were at risk of redundancy, as it targets 95 branch closures as part of a broader plan to update its footprint from June 2025.

While Santander insists that the U.K. remains a “core market,” the latest move has added to questions whether the Spanish lender intends to exit the British high street.

Finance

New ETF gives investor chance to act like a private equity giant

Published

37 minutes ago

June 15, 2025

Business Finance News

VanEck moves first to target alternative asset managers themselves

The S&P 500 is less than 3% from an all-time high. Six of its 11 sectors are within 5% of an all-time high. But even as the U.S. stock market index proves its resilience during a volatile stretch for investors, more money from within portfolios is expected to shift in to privately traded companies.

Jan Van Eck, CEO of ETF and mutual fund manager VanEck, says the trend of companies staying private for longer rather than seeking an initial public offering is here to stay and it offers new opportunities.

High-profile examples include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Sam Altman’s OpenAI and fintech Stripe.

According to Van Eck, allocations to private assets will jump from a current average portfolio holding level of approximately 2% to 10% in the years ahead.

Some ETFs have begun to invest small portions of their assets in privately held company shares, including SpaceX, such as the ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF (XOVR). VanEck has launched an ETF tackling the private opportunity in a different way: taking big positions in the publicly traded shares of the investment giants, including private equity firms and other alternative asset managers, that own many private companies.

The VanEck Alternative Asset Manager ETF (GPZ), which launched this month, has a portfolio holdings list that includes Brookfield, Blackstone, KKR, Brookfield Asset Management and Apollo, which combined make up almost 50% of the fund. TPG, Ares and Carlyle are also big positions, in the 5% range each.

The new ETF extends an existing focus on private markets for VanEck. For over a decade, it has offered investors access to private credit, through the VanEck BDC Income ETF (BIZD), which invests in the business development companies that lend to small- and mid-sized private companies. That ETF has a high level of exposure to Ares, Blue Owl, Blackstone, Main Street and Golub Capital, which make up about half of the fund. It pays a hefty dividend of 11%.

Investing private through a publicly traded ETF

“You have to believe this is a secular trend and growth will be higher than that for normal money managers, including ETF and mutual fund managers,” said Van Eck.

He cautions, however, there is more volatility in these funds compared to the public equity market overall. “You have to size it appropriately,” he added.