Bank CEO Diamond 'proud' of lending

Barclays boss Bob Diamond said he was 'proud' of the bank's lending record

Published: 10:26am, 10th February 2012
Updated: 11:38am, 12th February 2012

Barclays boss Bob Diamond hailed the bank's UK lending record as he claimed: "We really got on our horses to get businesses going."

The bank beat the Project Merlin targets agreed with the Government by 13% in 2011, as it handed out £43.6 billion of new lending to businesses, including £14.7 billion to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Mr Diamond said he was "proud" of the performance as the bank claimed to have supported 108,000 start-ups and returned 1,900 existing businesses to health.

Under the Project Merlin agreement, Britain's top five banks said they would increase lending available to SMEs to £76 billion this year and boost lending available to all businesses to £190 billion.

The improved lending figures came as the bank revealed a particularly strong performance at its UK retail and business banking division, which runs 1,625 branches and employs 34,100 staff.

The improved figures at the UK retail division will come as a surprise at a time of high unemployment, muted wage growth and low business confidence.

The division saw customers increase by 3% to 760,000 and recorded a 60% rise in pre-tax profits to £1.4 billion, after stripping out the impact of the division's £400 million charge for compensation for mis-selling payment protection insurance.

The business saw the number of current accounts increase by 2% to 11.9 million, savings accounts were up 5% to 15.1 million, and the number of mortgages increased 2% to 930,000.

Meanwhile, the number of UK loans in arrears of more than 90 days were down to 1.7%, compared to 2.6% in the previous year.

Part-nationalised rival Lloyds Banking Group also beat its Merlin target after lending £12.5 billion to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), compared with its £11.7 billion benchmark. Net lending to SMEs grew 3% and will remain positive this year under a new commitment