(Bloomberg) -- Barclays Plc said it recorded £85 million in losses tied to its leveraged finance portfolio in the third quarter after it struggled to get rid of some of the debt.
“The positions clear pretty quickly,” Anna Cross, Barclays’ finance director, said on a conference call with journalists. “When they don’t, we occasionally and episodically take a fair value mark and that’s what happened in the quarter.”
Cross declined to comment on whether the losses were tied to a single client, though she noted the company manages the business “with very strict risk limits.”
The losses weighed on revenue within the international corporate bank, where income slumped 21% to £385 million in the third quarter. That offset better-than-expected performance from the bank’s traders and dealmakers.
It’s the latest sign that banks are ramping up their leveraged lending once again. Still, the losses evoke memories of Wall Street results from two years ago, when lenders backed big corporate buyouts and ended up with tens of billions of dollars of so-called “hung debt” they struggled to get rid of.
“It’s very normal for both Barclays and the market as a whole” to book these losses, Cross said.
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