Optimism from Bob Diamond

Extracts from Reuters 25 Jan 08

By Clara Ferreira-Marques
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Barclays sees tougher market conditions in the next year as an opportunity for its investment banking arm to grow and invest, particularly in the United States, the bank's president said.

"2008 brings one very important change to our priority list, and that's the United States. It is difficult to get into the home market of the U.S bulge-bracket firms, but as we go into 2008, so many of them are retrenching," said Bob Diamond, president of Barclays and head of its investment banking arm.
"I am determined that in two, three or four years' time we don't look back and say this was the market opportunity to move up into the top tier and we flinched," he said on Friday.

Barclays' investment banking arm has seen strong growth in its Asian and commodities business, and Diamond said he saw that trend continuing, even if oil and other commodity prices come off the boil in 2008.

...announcing a writedown of $2.7 billion (1.4 billion pounds) in November for losses on securities linked to the subprime crisis.
Diamond said any major change from that would have had to have been announced to the market.
BarCap remained committed to its 15-20 percent long-term growth target through the cycle, but "2008 will be at the tough end of that," he said.

"We've seen the worst. We are bound to see one or two surprises, but I don't think they will be major," he said.
"I think we are going to see a workout situation for all of the firms for probably 2 or 3 years, the excesses of the market were so large."

Full article at
http://uk.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUKL2545362320080125?feedType=nl&feedName=ukdailyinvestor&pageNumber=3&virtualBrandChannel=0