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Barclays Sells Loan Portfolio to Investor Group Led by Goldman Sachs
LONDON — Barclays said on Monday that it had sold a portfolio of loans that included its secured lending business in Britain to a consortium of investors led by Goldman Sachs.
The sale represents the latest divestiture of a noncore business as the British bank looks to speed its overhaul under the leadership of its chairman, John McFarlane, who has a reputation for taking a hands-on approach to cutting costs.
Barclays is undertaking a restructuring that has slashed the size of its investment bank. The lender is focusing on several core or growing businesses, which include its corporate and retail bank in Britain, its African banking business and its Barclaycard credit card operations.
It has also shed several businesses it considers noncore. The lender announced last week that it was selling its retail banking, wealth management and part of its corporate banking businesses in Portugal to the Spanish lender Bankinter.
Mr. McFarlane pledged in July to speed up the lender’s overhaul by selling noncore units faster than originally planned, and he said that the bank would act quickly to curtail activity “which is marginal or which will not deliver the return on equity we require.”
Mr. McFarlane is leading Barclays until the bank finds a successor for Antony Jenkins, who was forced out on July 8 after the directors lost confidence in his ability to improve returns for shareholders.
“We continue to make solid progress in divesting assets from Barclays noncore,” Mr. McFarlane said in a news release. “The sale of U.K. secured lending is further evidence of our ability to reduce these legacy assets, as we target a risk-weighted assets figure” of around 20 billion pounds, or $30.3 billion, in 2017.
Barclays did not disclose the sale price of the secured lending unit, but it said it would reduce its so-called risk-weighted assets by £1.2 billion. Risk-weighted assets are a measure of a bank’s potential exposures, according to their level of risk.
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