Barclays in £615m sale

BARCLAYS has continued to trim its non-core business by selling its risk analytics and index unit to Bloomberg for around £615m.

The banking giant said it would make a pre-tax gain of about £535m on completion. Barclays wants to focus on its core UK and US banking operations and the overhaul has seen the lender sell its Barclaycard credit card operations in Spain and Portugal to Bancopopular-e and sell down its 62.3pc stake in Barclays Africa.

The sale includes Barclays’ fixed income benchmark indices, its aggregate family of indices and its BRAIS strategy of indices.

The benchmark indices would be rebranded as Bloomberg Barclays Indices for five years initially.