BARCLAYS AFRICA SAYS NOT YET APPROACHED BY AUTHORITIES OVER CURRENCY PROBE

Maria Ramos.

Barclays Africa Group has not yet been approached by South Africa’s competition regulators over a currency fixing probe launched last month, its chief executive said on Friday.

Africa’s No.3 lender has also not launched its own internal investigation but will co-operate fully with any investigation, Maria Ramos told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum Africa conference in Cape Town.

“We haven’t seen what the terms of investigation are. We will co-operate when we know what the investigation is going to cover,” Ramos said.

The Competition Commission on May 19 said it was investigating several global banks for allegedly fixing foreign exchange trades involving the rand currency.

The investigation, part of a global push to probe price-rigging in currency markets, is focussing on trading in currency pairs of the rand, whose daily value of trades ranges between 10 billion rand ($799 million) and 15 billion rand ($1.2 billion).

Barclays Africa, which applied for its first banking license in Nigeria, has said it wants to generate between 20-25% of its revenues from outside South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy with a developed banking sector.

Besides looking to boost its revenue, the bank was also improving efficiencies at branches, investing in technology platforms and digitisation, such as mobile banking, said Ramos.

The bank, which posted a 10% rise in annual earnings in March, would close branches to reduce its real estate exposure, with cost savings estimated at around 40% by next year, she said.

“When we talk about cutting costs in real estate, Yes it is closing down some branches but it is also branches where we don’t see people, where the number of people has declined significantly,” Ramos said.

She said Barclays Africa wants to cut cost-to-income ratio, a key measure of efficiency, to around 50%.

Reuters