Barclays Bank expanded its operations in Ireland last year, boosting customer deposits by 42 per cent to €1.64 billion and customer loans by 41 per cent to €890 million. According to accounts recently filed for Barclays Bank Ireland, the bank also boosted its fee income during 2014 by 34 per cent.
Barclays, which doesn’t have an Irish branch network but engages in wealth management and corporate banking, recorded total income last year of €38 million, up from €32.6 million the prior year.
The bank’s profit after tax fell from €25.7 million to €18.6 million, although the 2013 figure was artificially boosted by a near €13 million pension scheme credit.
“Profit [for 2014] was higher than the board’s expectation,” said the directors.
The Irish operation made a €75 million dividend payment to its British parent in 2013. No such payment was made last year, according to the accounts.
The directors also state that the bank is able to fund all of its operations from customer deposits in Ireland, “without the need to access its parent bank or the wholesale interbank market” for liquidity.
Notes to the bank’s balance sheet reveals that €456 million of its deposits come from other banks within the Barclays group. Only a tiny proportion of the heavily expanded €1.64 billion in customer deposits, however, emanates from entities attached to the group, indicating Barclays has won a lot of new deposits in the open market.
The accounts also confirm that its parent group pumped €126 million of fresh capital into the business in December to fund fresh growth.
A report signed by a bank director, David Farrow, says that, in January, the bank extended its Irish activities to include cross-Border merchanting services provided to the card division of the parent group.
Barclays number of staff in Ireland increased only slightly to 105 during the year, the accounts reveal, with average salaries of €96,000.
Its corporation tax bill fell from €2.1 million in 2013 to €843,000 last year, after it claimed reliefs of €1.9 million from tax authorities in relation to the 2012 and 2013 losses of another group company, Barclays Equities Trading (Ireland).
Barclays Irish corporate client list includes the books retailer Eason, Smyths Toys and Grafton Group, which own the Woodies DIY chain of stores. It also targets large global multinationals.
The unit appointed a new chief executive in March, when Sasha Wiggins took on responsibility for growing its corporate, investment banking and wealth management businesses here. David Martin, formerly the chief financial officer of food group IAWS, and Eoin O'Driscoll, a former chairman of Forfás, joined the board of the Irish unit at the beginning of the year.
