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The business

Barclays is a universal bank in two halves. Barclays UK is the ring-fenced retail and business bank plus Barclaycard UK, deposit-funded and stable. Barclays International holds the Investment Bank, the US Consumer Bank cards book, and the corporate and private banks. The franchise that sets the price is the Investment Bank: it runs roughly 40% of group income and is the single reason the stock sits below its domestic peers. Strip the IB out and you have a high-teens-return UK bank bolted to a US cards book; bolt the IB back on and earnings swing with the global markets and banking-fee wallet, which the market pays less for. In H1 2026 the IB earned a 16.0% RoTE and crossed £4B of quarterly income in Q1; Barclays UK returned 20.4%, the UK Corporate Bank 21.3%, the Private Bank and Wealth 26.9%, and the US Consumer Bank 30.2% reported (10.5% underlying, the gap being the reserve build on the cards book).

The engine by income is the Investment Bank at ≈40% of group income; the engine by return is Barclays UK at a 20.4% RoTE on a deposit-funded book, with a UK net interest margin that widened to 3.7% from 3.55% a year ago. What the financials do not show: the whole re-rate rests on Barclays proving the IB can hold a low-to-mid-teens return through a cycle rather than the high-single-digits it printed in 2022-2023. The 2026-2028 plan leans on exactly that, with group RoTE targeted to step from more than 12% in 2026 to more than 14% by 2028. What changed this half: 2026 income guidance was raised to about £31.5B, and credit costs turned up.