Barclays PLC’s stock has long been stuck in the mud, but so far this year it is zooming ahead of the likes of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley .
Shares of the London-based lender have risen 28% this year, making it one of the best-performing investment-banking stocks and taking it briefly above its pre-pandemic level. JPMorgan, by contrast, is up 19%, and Morgan Stanley has risen 18%. Spurring the recovery is a surge of activity in the U.K. lender’s investment-banking arm. It is a vindication for Chief Executive Jes Staley, who has clung to the idea that a robust investment bank complements Barclays’s traditional British banking operations.
“He had a lot of pressure to do more to shrink the investment bank for a number of years and resisted that,” said Christopher Cant, an analyst at Autonomous Research, a unit of AllianceBernstein. “That’s to his credit.” from rivals Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan this week point to another strong quarter for investment banks generally.
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