Barclays looking for U.S. retail bank to buy: report
British bank Barclays Plc (BARC.L) is looking to buy a retail bank in the United States to extend its presence after buying Lehman Brothers North American operations in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people close to the matter.
According to the report, the bank is not in talks with any U.S. banks and no deals are imminent.
But Barclays has designated an internal team to assess possible targets and is looking for a franchise with a strong branch network and deposit base, the Journal said.
The newspaper also said Barclays was considering additional retail acquisitions in Western Europe. The bank recently bought Citigroup's (C.N) credit-card businesses in Italy and Portugal.
A Barclays spokesman declined to comment on the report.
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Barclays plc is a British financial services firm operating worldwide. It is a holding company that is listed on the London and New York stock exchanges, and was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange until 2008. It is also a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Barclays PLC is ranked as the 25th largest company in the world by Forbes Global 2000 (2008 list) and the fourth largest financial services provider in the world by Tier 1 capital ($32.5 billion).[citation needed] According to Datamonitor, by market share, Barclays is the largest financial services provider globally with $3.7 trillion of assets.[1] It is the second largest bank in the United Kingdom and the world based on asset size.[2] Its share price fell by 90% in the year to 23 January 2009, but has recovered substantially, leaving it higher as of 3 September 2009 than it had been a year before.[3]
The bank's headquarters are at One Churchill Place in Canary Wharf, in London's Docklands, having moved there in May 2005 from Lombard Street in the City of London.
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