Monday, November 7, 2011

Is Barclays the firm that will actually provide detailed disclosure?

A ZeroHedge post asks if Barclays is going to have to follow Jefferies and provide daily detailed disclosure.
Courtesy of Bloomberg we may now know who the market will focus its attention on next: 
"Barclays has $12.5 billion sovereign risk, $20.1 billion of risk to corporations and another $10.2 billion to financial institutions. It also has $66.6 billion of exposure in its retail business, 86% of which is to Spain and Italy. Group and corporate-level risk mitigation (sovereign CDS, total return swaps) may reduce these exposures." 
Or, as the Jefferies case study demonstrated so vividly, it may not, and the only option will now be for Barclays to post daily releases with CUSIP breakdowns...
Since CUSIP breakdowns were not adequate for market analysis to actually assess the risk of Jefferies, Barclays needs to go much further and provide all the useful, relevant information.

Fortunately, this type of disclosure would be in keeping with Barclays CEO Bob Diamond's banks behaving as good citizens.

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