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Barclays says net profit slides 35 percent in first half

LONDON - British bank Barclays said Thursday net profit had slumped 35 percent to 1.718 billion pounds (2.166 billion euros, 3.347 billion dollars) in the first six months of 2008, hit by the credit crunch.

The result however beat analysts' forecasts of profit after tax totalling 1.51 billion pounds which would have been a drop of 43 percent, according to Dow Jones Newswires.

Bad debts, including writedowns caused by the credit crunch and US subprime housing crisis, rocketed 155 percent to 2.448 billion pounds in the first half compared with the same period in 2007, Barclays said in an earnings statement.

Pretax profit slid 33 percent to 2.754 billion pounds.

‘Although I take some comfort from our relative performance in managing our risks and in generating income, a decline in (pretax) profit of 33 percent is acutely disappointing,’ Barclays chief executive John Varley said in the results statement.

‘We have experienced significant writedowns (...) it would be wrong in this review to suggest that the market conditions over the foreseeable future will be anything other than tough, not least because we are now seeing the impact of slowing economies around the world and that means that we must remain very vigilant to managing risk,’ Varley added.