Jes Staley
Management
Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining this 2016 Third Quarter Earnings Call. The performance we have reported today represents a period of strong progress against our strategy as we outlined on March 1st, and we have moved another stride closer towards completing the restructuring of Barclays, a restructuring that will create a simplified bank producing high quality returns for our shareholders, and on a sustainable basis. Looking at each of our strategic priorities, we have cause to be encouraged. First, our core businesses continue to perform very well, with a combined return on tangible equity, excluding notable items, of 10.4% for the third quarter. And our underlying core profit before tax increased 16% compared to the third quarter of 2015. The majority of that improvement in profitability came from our Corporate and Investment Bank, driven in large part by very strong performances in Credit Trading and Macro, where these two desks have generated 40% greater revenue this quarter than in the same quarter last year. Barclays UK continues to perform very well, producing an impressive underlying return on tangible equity of 21.1%. We have remained resolutely open for business since the Brexit vote in June, as our personal banking customers and business clients have continued to seek our support and advice. During the quarter, Barclays made over 100,000 consumer loans, up some 20% from last year. We lent just over £1 billion to small businesses, and £160 million to British farmers alone. Mortgage completions were nearly £5.4 billion, up on the same period last year, and application rates are also holding up reasonably well compared to the third quarter of 2015. We’ll see how the next few months progress of course, but as of now we are encouraged by the resilience of the UK consumer and overall business…