Barclays to speed up cost-cuts after new mis-selling hit

By Steve Slater and Matt Scuffham

LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays' (BARC.L) new executive chairman sought to stamp his mark on the bank on Wednesday by accelerating the sale of assets and cost cutting, after the group reported an 12 percent rise in profit and another big charge to compensate customers.

Chairman John McFarlane, who arrived at Barclays in April with a reputation for taking bold action, laid out plans for the bank's revival after ousting Chief Executive Antony Jenkins earlier this month, saying the pace of change had been too slow.

"We need to accelerate the execution of the strategy," McFarlane said, pinpointing a need to speed up the growth in earnings, return on equity and capital generation, as well as cut out bureaucracy.

"Barclays ... remains far too hierarchical, bureaucratic and group-centric to deliver the required outcomes. I therefore want to see much more streamlined processes," he said.

He said the bank would keep its dividend at 6.5 pence per share this year, the same as 2014, so it can build capital.

Barclays' core capital rose to 11.1 percent at the end of June from 10.3 percent at the end of 2014, and the bank said it had no need to raise any, which some analysts said it should do.

"We don't expect to be doing external capital raises," Tushar Morzaria, finance director, told reporters.

McFarlane said he plans to cut costs as a percentage of income to "mid 50s" percent, from 70 percent in the first-half of the year, which is expected to involve cuts to staff numbers and branches.

The bank said it closed 98 branches in Britain in the year to the end of June, or 6 percent of its network.

It is in the middle of a three-year plan to cut 19,000 jobs by the end of 2016, including 7,000 in the investment bank.

INVESTMENT BANK

McFarlane also said he plans to cut assets that Barclays no longer wants to 20 billion pounds by the end of 2017. It had 57 billion pounds of these "non-core" assets at the end of June and had previously planned to cut that number to 45 billion by the end of 2016.

These include derivatives products and its retail operations in Portugal and Italy, which the bank is trying to sell.

McFarlane did not signal any major change in strategy for the investment bank, which is expected to be trimmed but remain a core part of the business.

Barclays shares rose 2 percent to 286 pence by 0802 GMT, outperforming a 0.5 percent rise by the European bank index. Analysts attributed the gain to its capital generation, lower losses from bad loans and a solid performance by the investment bank and credit cards in the second quarter.

Barclays set aside another 850 million pounds ($1.33 billion) in the second quarter to compensate UK customers, including 600 million pounds to compensate customers mis-sold payment protection insurance products, which has now cost the bank 6 billion pounds.

The investment bank's return on equity improved to 10.2 percent in the first six months of this year, from 5.7 percent a year ago. Morzaria said this reflected changes made to reshape it in the past year and no big strategic shift was on the cards.

"It (will be) a continuation of that strategy, refining it and looking for areas of further improvement," he said.

Barclays reported an adjusted pretax profit of 1.85 billion pounds for the second quarter, up 12 percent from a year ago and ahead of the average analyst forecast of 1.75 billion pounds.

The higher mis-selling provision was largely offset by a 496 million pound gain based on a U.S. court ruling related to the former assets of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

($1 = 0.6403 pounds)

(Editing by Jane Merriman)