All eyes this morning were on the Independent Commission on Banking, with the big bank's shares up on the news that their retail arms should be ringfenced, and that Lloyds Banking Group should sell more branches to increase competition.
Barclays was the biggest riser among the FTSE 100 by 9:30, up 3.2% to 306p.
Royal Bank of Scotland rose 2.6% to reach 44.5p, while Lloyds was up just under 1% to 62.7p.
Bruce Packard of Seymour Pierce has already suggested the bank's managements may be "secretly quite pleased" with the report, one of a number of early responses to this morning's announcements.
The FTSE as a whole was down just a fraction, by 4 points, to 6,052.
