LONDON, April 7, 2026, 13:10 (BST)
Barclays PLC has bought back roughly £525 million of stock since February, stock exchange filings showed on Tuesday, taking its latest repurchase programme beyond the halfway mark. The bank said it had repurchased 125.1 million shares at an average 419.3663 pence apiece and would cancel them. 1
The running total puts Barclays more than halfway through the £1 billion programme it unveiled with full-year results on Feb. 10. That matters because the bank paired the buyback with a promise to return more than £15 billion to shareholders between 2026 and 2028, putting capital return near the centre of the investment case. 2
Barclays is due to report first-quarter results on April 28. In February, it said 2025 pretax profit rose 12% to £9.1 billion and lifted its 2028 target for return on tangible equity, or profit measured against shareholder capital excluding intangible assets, to more than 14%. 3
The lender also paired the current buyback with a 5.6 pence final dividend, taking capital distribution linked to 2025 to 3.7 billion pounds. Barclays said then that higher income and lower costs would help drive returns. 2
Tuesday’s filing covered purchases made over four trading days from March 30 to April 2, including 5.92 million shares bought on March 30 and 4.58 million on April 2. After the cancellations, Barclays said its issued share capital would stand at 13.7177 billion shares. 1
Barclays is not alone. Lloyds launched a £1.75 billion buyback with annual results in January, while NatWest announced a £750 million repurchase in February as Britain’s listed banks leaned harder on payouts and tougher profitability targets. 4
The comparison matters because Barclays’ own targets lean heavily on the United States. Analysts told Reuters in February that reaching the bank’s new goals would depend in large part on growth there, where Barclays generates 50%-60% of its investment-bank revenue and also runs a growing consumer card business. 2
But that U.S. emphasis also sharpens the downside. Hargreaves Lansdown senior equity analyst Matt Britzman said in January that Barclays’ U.S. card operations account for about 11% of group profits, while Finance Director Anna Cross said in February the bank had “a number of levers” to blunt a proposed U.S. 10% cap on credit card interest rates. Separate worries around private credit have not gone away either: Reuters reported in February that Barclays was among the lenders exposed to collapsed UK mortgage provider Market Financial Solutions, after which Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading, said, “We’re starting to continue to see these types of things pop up, which is definitely a problem”; Reuters reported last month that Barclays had begun pulling back from some asset-based lending, or loans backed by collateral, to smaller borrowers after losses linked to MFS and Tricolor. 5
