Barclays cuts back risky lending after £228m hit from UK mortgage firm MFS
Barclays is pulling back from lending to risky borrowers, as its chief executive warned of increasing numbers of fraud cases and the bank took a £228m hit from the failure of a mortgage lender,The mortgage lender Market Financial Solutions (MFS) collapsed in February amid allegations of fraud, and the UK’s financial regulator has since launched an investigation into the scandal,Barclays provided banking services to MFS and said the £228m hit had pushed total credit impairment charges to £823m in the first three months of 2026, up from £643m a year earlier,Last year the British bank reported a £110m loss over the US sub-prime auto lender Tricolor, which collapsed amid fraud allegations,The chief executive, CS Venkatakrishnan, said: “This [alleged] fraud, as with the one in Tricolor, indicates to us the importance of strong financial controls at borrowers and the difficulty ex-ante of identifying fraud.
“As such, we are constraining lending to certain structured finance counterparties who operate more vulnerable business models and cannot convince us of the quality and independence of their financial controls.”Losses stemming from the collapse of MFS, Tricolor and the US auto parts company First Brands (with allegations of fraud or mismanagement in all three cases) have raised fears over lending standards in the $2tn (£1.4tn) private credit industry, which has come under greater scrutiny from regulators.There are concerns that the fallout could destabilise traditional banks that issue loans to the shadow banking sector.Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England and chair of the Financial Stability Board, has described it as a “relatively opaque world” and stressed the need for transparency and solid stress testing, because otherwise people might lose faith in the financial system as a whole.
Venkatakrishnan added: “These things will only continue to increase in frequency … so it is important to have strong defences,The incidence of fraud depends on the weakness of the economic cycle, because if you’re operating a more vulnerable business model, your, incentive structure changes, if the market becomes weak,”Barclays also set aside a further £105m for compensating customers in the UK’s motor finance scandal, increasing its provision to £430m,Its pre-tax profit in the first quarter rose 3% to £2,8bn, with revenues up 6% at £8.
2bn.Quarterly income from investment banking topped £4bn for the first time, driven by 16% growth in equities income after trading volatility since the start of the Iran war on 28 February.Venkatakrishnan warned of a broader impact of the rise in energy prices if the war dragged on.“Higher oil prices and the longer they go on will have an impact on the economy,” he said.“And we do care.
We’ve not seen anything particularly yet in terms of credit weakness.But what you’ve seen is that the inflation print in the UK has gone up.”Later on Tuesday, Barclays will begin offering debit card holders 5% cashback on fuel at Tesco pumps, up to £10 a month.“This is our way of trying to recognise the concern that motorists have at the petrol pump,” he said.The bank’s chief financial officer, Anna Cross, said businesses were in “good shape” and there had been no credit deterioration in companies or consumers.
Consumers have responded to the Middle East war by prioritising essential spending and repaying more credit card debt, she said, “it’s the rational thing for consumers to be doing in this environment”.Venkatakrishnan defended the bank’s trading performance against that of Wall Street banks, describing it as “middle of the pack”.He pointed out that Barclays had no commodities business, while US banks benefited from commodities trading amid the Middle East conflict.Will Howlett, a financials analyst at the UK the wealth manager Quilter Cheviot, said: “Barclays posted a solid, if slightly messy, first quarter, with a strong underlying performance partially obscured by one-off issues.”
‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory
There is only one correct way to extricate a 15-tonne wrought iron mast from one of the world’s most famous and beloved warships – very slowly, and with extreme care.Which is precisely how a 30-strong team led by shipwrights and riggers set about their task on Monday night into Tuesday morning when they lifted the foremast from HMS Victory as part of a £42m conservation project.A 750-tonne crane removed the 23-metre mast from the ship in an operation requiring power to lift the wrought iron structure but also a great deal of delicacy to make sure the fabric of the vessel was not harmed.In the coming days, as long as the wind does not get up, two more masts – the mizzen and bowsprit – will also be craned off Nelson’s 18th-century flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar and laid on a Portsmouth dockside ready for conservation work to begin.At daybreak on Tuesday, Patrizia Pierazzo, the deputy project director, hailed it as a “great start”
Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition
Kae Tempest’s new novel is dedicated to “you”, the reader. It also comes with a plea: “Be gentle though.” But to whom or what should we be gentle? The book or the writer? Having Spent Life Seeking is Tempest’s second novel, arriving a decade after his first and following a period of considerable personal change, including gender transition. Perhaps inevitably, it is a book full of struggle and soul-searching. It is also painfully earnest: an enervating read with an exhausting intensity that neither relents nor resolves
The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said that Crash would finish the band. Then it was in Dumb and Dumber’
The Primitives formed in the summer of 1984 with a singer called Keiron, who brought me in to write songs. When he left, we pinned up an advert in Coventry library and Tracy, who I’d actually met before on a Youth Opportunity Programme, answered. At that point, we sounded more like the Birthday Party or the Gun Club, so I wrote three new songs – Through the Flowers, Across My Shoulder and Crash – to test a more pop direction. Crash was simple and noisy, with a basic guitar line that became the “Na na na” hook.It was in our live set, but we dropped it quite quickly
‘I wanted alcohol to take me to a place where I was not’: comedian John Robins on the moment he realised he had a drinking problem
For most of his life, John Robins assumed he got more out of alcohol than it took from him. Now he knows it was the other way round ‘I picked up the bottle of wine and drank straight out of it. I was seven’ Read an exclusive extract from his new memoirThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
Tate at a turning point: new director must confront unwieldy ‘beast’ of an art institution
Roland Rudd, the chair of Tate, is in a bullish mood when we meet at his offices in the Adelphi Building, which sits on the Thames between the art institution’s two London sites. “Things have never been better,” he says.It’s a rebuff to any suggestion that the organisation is in flux – and, as if he were expecting the question to arise, Rudd produces a piece of paper from his suit pocket with notes to prove his point. The recent wins, he says, are so numerous that he has written them down so as not to forget any.At Tate Britain, Turner and Constable drew in 270,000 people, which Rudd insists “is phenomenal”; Lee Miller was “the most popular photography show anywhere in the UK”; and “Tracey” (Tracey Emin, to you and me) has brought in 125,000 paying visitors, “a remarkable number”, over at Tate Modern
The Guide #240: My new obsession is the mesmerising world of the Chipmunks at 16rpm
The best album I’ve heard so far this year isn’t from this year at all. It’s from 2015 (though its recordings were made decades before that), and is a collection of sludgy, doomy covers of late-70s punk, new wave and pop perennials: My Sharona, Call Me, Walk Like an Egyptian. The guitars on this mysterious tribute album have had their pitch tuned down to a low, thick squelch, the drum beats are slow and punishingly thudding, and the vocals, while sung in a sweet tenor, have a strange, almost lobotomised quality to them. The weirdest thing of all though is who is performing: Alvin, Simon, Theodore.OK, let’s explain
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