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.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Eric Trump has a warning for banks: change the way you operate, or go extinct.

“The modern financial system is broken, it’s slow, it’s expensive,” the executive vice president of the Trump Organization told CNBC’s Dan Murphy in Dubai while discussing the United Arab Emirates’ development as a cryptocurrency hub.

“There’s nothing that can be done on blockchain that can’t be done better than the way that the current financial institutions are working. SWIFT is an absolute disaster,” Eric Trump said on Tuesday, referring to the global international messaging network for financial transactions.

He lambasted what he described as the slowness and inefficiency of the traditional banking system, calling it “antiquated” — a criticism held by many, especially crypto enthusiasts.

The second son of U.S. President Donald Trump has made frequent visits to the UAE in recent years amid expanding Trump-branded real estate projects in the country and wider Gulf region — and as the desert sheikhdom rapidly becomes a global hub for cryptocurrency.

A vocal advocate of digital currencies, Eric Trump in December predicted that bitcoin would reach $1 million while attending the Bitcoin MENA 2024 conference in Abu Dhabi. 

Crypto markets have proven to be highly volatile amid a sell-off of risk assets, stoked by President Trump’s trade tariffs imposed on countries worldwide. Bitcoin was trading around $95,357 late Tuesday.

“Our banking system favors the ultra-wealthy,” Eric Trump said. “And what actually got me into [cryptocurrency] is the fact I realized our banking system was weaponized against the vast majority of people in our country, either the people that don’t have the zeros on their balance sheet, or people who might have worn that red hat that said ‘Make America Great Again.’ And it forced me into the crypto world. And I’m telling you, if the banks don’t watch what’s coming, they’re going to be extinct in 10 years.”

The Trump administration has vowed to ring in a booming era for the crypto industry, and both President Trump and his wife Melania have launched their own meme coins, leading to concerns from ethics experts about potential conflicts of interest. The Trump family is also at the helm of crypto platform World Liberty Financial, which was co-founded with real estate billionaire and current White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Eric Trump and his older brother Donald Trump Jr. recently announced plans to launch a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin through World Liberty Financial, and in March launched a new bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin, co-founded with Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot.

The UAE, meanwhile, continues to attract international crypto investors, startups, exchanges, and highly-attended events in the sector, thanks in large part to supportive government regulations for the crypto industry. Eric Trump and others in both the Trump Organization and the White House administration have lauded their relationships with Arab Gulf leaders, praising what they see as key growth markets with pro-business policies.

Eric Trump’s comments come ahead of his father’s planned visit to the Gulf region from May 13 to 16, during which he is expected to stop in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Trump will be the first U.S. president to visit the Emirati sheikhdom since George W. Bush in 2008. 

The trip is emblematic of the Trump administration’s warm ties with Gulf governments; during his first presidential term, President Trump’s first overseas visit was to Saudi Arabia.

Swiss giant UBS on Wednesday beat bottom line expectations amid sharp returns in investment banking while warning of the global trade impact of sweeping U.S. tariffs as it seeks to rein in steep share declines.

Net profit attributable to shareholders hit $1.692 billion in the first quarter, compared with a mean forecast of $1.359 billion in a LSEG poll of analysts. Group revenue over the stretch stood at $12.557 billion, versus analyst expectations of $12.99 billion.

Other first-quarter highlights included:

• Return on tangible equity reached 8.5%, versus 3.9% in the fourth quarter.
• CET 1 capital ratio, a measure of bank solvency, was 14.3%, unchanged from the December quarter.

The lender said it delivered a 32% year-on-year hike in revenues of the global markets unit of its investment banking arm, largely driven by “higher client activity in equities and FX with gains across all regions.”

Critically, the lender posted $1.629 billion in its net interest income (NII) — the difference between earnings from loans and investments and the payments on deposits —  down 16% year-on-year and 11% from the fourth quarter, guiding for further declines in the June quarter.

“In the second quarter we expect net interest income (NII) in Global Wealth Management to decline sequentially by a low single-digit percentage, and we see a similar decline in Personal & Corporate Banking’s NII in Swiss francs. In US dollar terms, Personal & Corporate Banking’s NII is expected to increase sequentially by a mid-single-digit percentage, based on current foreign exchange rates,” UBS said.

Investors are keenly watching these metrics as European banks transition to an environment of monetary easing, particularly in Switzerland, which has been combating a strong franc and depressed inflation with interest rates as low as 0.25%.

Deposed this month as continental Europe’s largest bank by market capitalization by Banco Santander, UBS has suffered share declines of roughly 10% in the year to date, with the brunt of losses logged after the White House’s imposition of tariffs on global trade partners on April 2.

Switzerland faces a 31% duty if it fails to agree a more conciliatory trade deal by the end of Washington’s 90-day reprieve in early July. Comparatively, the European Union was hit with 20% in U.S. levies.

Tensions with Washington and a potential recessionary outlook for the world’s largest economy spell trouble for the Swiss banking giant and its money-spinning global wealth management division, with around half of UBS’ invested assets concentrated in the broader Americas region last year.

“Rapid and significant changes to trade tariffs, heightened risk of escalation and significantly increased macroeconomic uncertainty led to major market volatility in the first weeks of April,” UBS said Wednesday. “With a wide range of possible outcomes, the economic path forward is particularly unpredictable. The prospect of higher tariffs on global trade presents a material risk to global growth and inflation, clouding the interest rate outlook.”

It flagged the possibility of “further spikes in volatility” as markets remain sensitive to new tariffs-led developments, noting that “Prolonged uncertainty would affect sentiment and cause businesses and investors to delay important decisions on strategy, capital allocation and investments.”

The picture of UBS’ long-term profitability remains darkened by questions over potential new — and more draconian — capital requirements from Swiss authorities, which have questioned the Swiss titan’s “too big to fail” status since its absorption of collapsed domestic rival Credit Suisse. The transaction — which one politician at the time dubbed the “deal of the century” — has propelled UBS down the path of maximum resistance against further restrictions, which it argues would undermine its competitiveness as an already adequately capitalized entity.

“UBS’s lobbying is both visible and unmistakable. It’s clearly resonating in various places. But once again: the Federal Council cannot be intimidated by lobbying, but must also represent the interests of taxpayers,” Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter told broadcaster SRF last month, according to a Google translation.

“The Federal Council has one goal: that in the event of a crisis, a UBS that is systemically important is resolvable. This means that the systemically important parts of the bank can be separated in Switzerland. That must be the goal of the Federal Council and the new legislation.”