UK banking giant Barclays’ European Union headquarters in Dublin saw the size of its balance sheet grow more than 5 per cent in the first six months of the year to reach €150 billion as it continued to explore moving the hub to Paris.
The assets base of the unit, Barclays Bank Ireland, also included €4.39 billion of loans attached to the German consumer finance business it agreed last month to sell to Austrian bank Bawag, according to its latest interim report.
The asset increase was driven partly by growth in trading portfolio assets, mainly as it held tradable securities, such as bonds and equities, to be ready to offer quotes to clients looking to buy and sell assets. This type of business is known as market making.
Barclays Bank Ireland, which is known internally as Barclays Europe, is the group’s main legal entity in the European Economic Area and the second-largest bank by assets in the Republic, after Bank of Ireland.
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Its Paris office, however, is increasingly becoming a trading centre. The UK group said a year ago that it was considering moving its post-Brexit EU headquarters from Dublin to Paris.
The group has previously said such a move would affect only “a small number of roles” in Dublin, where its workforce doubled to about 300 in the wake of the UK deciding to exit the EU.
Barclays and Bank of America were the only big international banks to choose Dublin as their main banking hub in the union following the vote. Citigroup had already established its EU based in the State six months before the Brexit referendum.
Barclays Bank Ireland swung into a €102 million pretax loss in the first half from a €174 million profit for the previous year. This was driven by a €252 million loss on the sale of its Italian retail mortgage portfolio.
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