Barclays sells Portugal assets to Spain's Bankinter for 175 million euros

(Reuters) - Barclays Plc (BARC.L) said on Wednesday it would sell its Portugal-based non-core assets to Spain's Bankinter SA (BKT.MC) for about 175 million euros (129 million pounds), as part of chairman John McFarlane's turnaround plan to sell assets and cut costs.

The sale includes such assets as retail banking, wealth and insurance management businesses and part of the corporate banking businesses. The price for those assets will be 100 million euros.

Barclays will also sell its insurance business for 75 million euros to Bankinter's subsidiary Bankinter Vida, which operates an insurance joint venture with Mapfre SA (MAP.MC).

After completing these transactions, Barclays expects a reduction of about 1.7 billion pounds of risk- weighted assets. The bank also expects to incur a loss of about 200 million pounds after tax, part of which will be recorded in third quarter of 2015.

About 1,000 Barclays banking and insurance employees and 84 branches are expected to be transferred to Bankinter and Bankinter Vida.

The bank said it would continue to operate Barclaycard, investment banking and multinational corporate banking in Portugal.

(Reporting by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru, editing by Larry King)