C.S. Venkatakrishnan said UK banks have weathered the turmoil impacting smaller US lenders, with deposits at his firm growing over the first quarter.
(Bloomberg) — C.S. Venkatakrishnan said UK banks have weathered the turmoil impacting smaller US lenders, with deposits at his firm growing over the first quarter.
“The UK has been more insulated from that deposit flight across banks,” the Barclays Plc chief executive officer said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday, his first since completing three months of cancer treatment earlier this year. “The deposit franchise has behaved extremely well and predictably.”
With Credit Suisse Group AG and various smaller US lenders upended by customers pulling deposits, investors are now closely tracking the flow of money into or out of banks. At Barclays, group deposits rose by about £10 billion ($12.5 billion) in the first quarter with Venkatakrishnan noting it benefited in particular from corporates stashing more cash at the bank.
Still, he expects there will be changes to bank regulation after the recent liquidity issues at some lenders. Regulators will likely reconsider how they assess liquidity and “are also probably going to look at how they supervise big banks versus smaller banks,” he said.
Barclays shares were up 3.9% at 11:49 a.m. in London after its traders surpassed expectations with a surprise increase in fixed income revenue
Read More: Barclays Shares Jump as Bond Traders Drive Profit Beat
The interview comes almost two months after Venkatakrishnan said he was in remission after completing his treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He said this enforced period of working from home had given him a renewed appreciation of working with his colleagues in person.
Read More: Barclays CEO Says He’s in Remission After Cancer Treatment
The executive also defended his board over its earlier backing of then-CEO Jes Staley over his links to Jeffrey Epstein when he was at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
In recent months, the bank’s decision to allow Staley to leave on good terms has come under scrutiny as a number of US legal cases reveal new details of the Staley’s interactions with Epstein before he joined the British bank, including excerpts from hundreds of emails between the two men.
“There are new allegations — our board has spoken about these new allegations — they are serious,” Venkatakrishnan said, while noting the bank would have employed rigorous processes to reach its decisions around Staley. “I know our board well, they are very thoughtful, deliberative people. And while I was not a member of the board, I know individually and collectively that they employ very careful and detailed processes to reach their decisions.”
Read More: Barclays Directors Should Be Probed Over Staley, Says Bramson
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