Barclays confirms sale of Africa business as annual profit falls

Barclays confirmed plans to sell its African business on Tuesday as it announced a drop in full year profit and a cut to the dividend.

For the year to 31 December, adjusted pre-tax profit slipped 2% to £5.4bn and the bank announced a £1.45bn provision for PPI misselling.

Analysts had been expecting Barclays to report a profit of around £5.8bn.

In addition, it said it will slash its dividend by more than half to 3p per share this year and the next.

Barclays also confirmed that it will sell its 62.3% stake in Barclays Africa, as it looks to focus on Barclays UK and Barclays Corporate & International.

Barclays said the sale, along with its restructuring plan, would boost capital by at least 1 percentage point.

Chief executive Jes Staley said: "Our 2015 performance demonstrates the strength of Barclays' Core business, as well as the importance of continuing to make progress in running down Non-Core and controlling our costs to deliver the returns our shareholders deserve in a reasonable time frame.”

He added that Barclays was “fundamentally on the right path, and is, at its core, a very good business.

“There is of course more we need to do and areas where I believe we can move much faster to deliver the high performing group that Barclays can and should be. 2016 will consequently be a year of accelerated delivery from a good base."

Shore Capital said the update was “pretty disappointing” overall.

“We suspect the market will not be too impressed by the changes to guidance or the measures being taken to improve performance. Cost cutting does not seem to be aggressive enough, to us, and the lack of formal guidance on return on tangible equity is a little worrying."