Banks continue to come under pressure for a variety of reasons, with Barclays losing ground after an analyst sell note in the wake of a meeting with the business.
Bruce Packard at Seymour Pierce said that while nothing new came out of the meeting, the two sides had opposing views about the future performance of Barclays Capital. Packard said:
Barclays disagree with our hypothesis that the Fixed Income Currency and Commodity division of Bar Cap (£13bn of group income, or 45% of group total income) was driven by low interest rates and global savings imbalances – but the counter argument "Barclays Capital is well positioned, whatever the macro economic environment" is not well supported with evidence.
Separately, George Osborne, shadow chancellor, singled out Barclays bosses for "not understanding what the rest of the country is going through" on TV last night. The reason why bank bashing is such a popular political sport is because at the moment there are more losers than winners from the banking crisis. In such a world, taking the part of the losers is a promsing path to political power, in our view.
Barclays has dipped 0.6p to 366.25p in a rising market while Royal Bank of Scotland - fined £28m for breaches of competition law - is 0.82p lower at 43.96p and Lloyds Banking Group is down 0.98p at 62.27p. As Packard said, the bank bashing by politicians is not helping, while there is also the spectre of the government trying to sell some of its shares in the state owned banks after the election.
Meanwhile Allied Irish Bank has lost another 22% to €1.077 awaiting news of a government bailout. Bank of Ireland is down more than 3% at €1.21.
