Barclay card report

Essay by daqoosUniversity, Master'sC+, March 2007

download word file, 11 pages 5.0

1. Introduction:

Barclays is a UK-based financial services group engaged primarily in banking, investment banking and investment management. In terms of assets employed, Barclays is one of the largest financial services groups in the UK. It is also a leading provider of coordinated global services to multinational corporations and financial institutions worldwide. Barclays has been involved in banking for over 300 years and operates in over 60 countries with over 74,800 employees.

For the year 2003, the group achieved a pre-tax profit of £3,845 million. Shareholders' funds were £16.7 billion and the Tier 1 capital ratio was 7.9%. Barclays has seven business grouping: Barclays Africa, Barclaycard, Barclays Capital, Barclays Global Investors, Barclays Private Clients, UK Banking. There aim to create value by building a virtuous circle of satisfied stakeholders. In this they benefit by tackling a changing global market and brand development. However, its control style is a hands-off relationship and has less control over the businesses and its strategy is left to the Executives

Barclaycard is a wholly owned subsidiary of Barclays PLC, set up in 1966 and is the UK leading and first credit card business.

It offers a full range of credit cards to customers and can be used to pay for goods and services together with card payment facilities to retailers and other businesses. Barclaycard provides more than 11 million credit cards in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. The business has four divisions:

Barclaycard UK -provides credit cards for 9.7 million customers in the UK

Barclaycard International - provides credit cards in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, African & the Caribbean

Company Barclaycard - provides corporate charge cards to 135,000 businesses.

Barclaycard Merchant Services - provides payment facilities to 131,000 retailers

Barclaycard has been a brand in the UK. It was synonymous to the term...