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LONDON. — Barclays Plc, Britain’s second-biggest bank, is preparing to step up its asset reduction target and said it’s being probed by regulators investigating the possible manipulation of foreign-exchange markets.
Chief financial officer Tushar Morzaria will lead a review that will decide whether the lender will increase its £80 billion target, chief executive officer Antony Jenkins told reporters on a conference call yesterday as the lender posted a 26 percent fall in third-quarter pre-tax profit. The company plans to publish the result early next year.

Barclays this month raised ₤5,8 billion in a rights offering after the bank in June was found one of two British lenders to miss stricter capital rules.

The UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority is imposing a 3 percent leverage ratio, forcing banks to hold £3 of equity for every £100 of assets. Jenkins (52) said yesterday the London-based lender is on track to meet that requirement by June.

“It’s good news, it’s what needs to be done, but it’s going to be a long time before the leverage debate is over,” said Chirantan Barua, a banking analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd. in London, who rates the bank market perform.

“But, how much money do you lose on it by removing the assets, and if it’s nothing, what was it doing there in the first place?”
The lender has reduced assets by about £20 billion so far, Deutsche Bank AG analysts led by Jason Napier estimated in a report to clients yesterday. Jenkins told analysts on a call today that he can say “with absolute certainty that over time, we’ll achieve more” than the £65 billion to £80 billion in deleveraging announced earlier this year.

Barclays rose as much as 4 percent and was up 3,1 percent at 274,25 pence at 11:31am in London. The stock has advanced 13 percent this year, lagging only Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s 63 percent increase. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc has gained 13 percent and HSBC Holdings Plc has risen 6,4 percent.

RBS is scheduled to release third-quarter earnings tomorrow, followed by HSBC on November 4. Lloyds yesterday posted a wider third-quarter loss after setting aside money to compensate clients wrongly sold payment-protection insurance.

Barclays also said it’s co-operating with requests for information from regulators probing the manipulation of foreign-exchange benchmarks. The bank is reviewing its trading over a “several year” period, it added.

Bloomberg News reported in June that traders at some banks said they shared information about their positions through instant messages, executed their own trades before client orders and sought to manipulate the benchmark WM/Reuters rates.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has opened a formal probe, joining regulators such as in the US, Switzerland and the European Union.

Regulators are scrutinising an instant-message group senior traders at firms including Barclays, Citigroup Inc. and RBS used to pool details of their positions and client orders, people with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.

Barclays has about 10 percent of the foreign-exchange market after Deutsche Bank and Citigroup, according to a survey by Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc. Jenkins declined to comment on the probe yesterday.

Pre-tax profit, excluding gains and losses on the bank’s own debt, fell to £1,39 billion in the third quarter from £1,87 billion in the year-earlier period, matching the median estimate of 11 analysts.  — Bloomberg.