BARCLAYS PLC JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Barclays Africa Group's (>> Barclays Africa Group Ltd) investment banking division expects countries outside South Africa to contribute more than half its revenue in five years' time after taking on most of its parent's operations on the continent.
Barclays Africa's corporate and investment banking (CIB) arm is now expanding businesses such as trading government bonds into nearly all of the lender's 12 operations in Africa, said CIB Chief Executive Stephen van Coller.
Countries other than South Africa currently account for about a third of CIB's revenue, but it says that is increasing.
"We've grown revenue in the rest of Africa faster than South Africa, but that is to be expected," van Coller said, referring to the low base from which those countries are growing.
Under a deal concluded last year, Britain's Barclays (>> Barclays PLC) handed over ownership of eight African businesses to its South African subsidiary in exchange for a 62.3 percent stake in the new Barclays Africa entity.
In some of those countries, the company had fairly small investment banking operations, offering just basic foreign currency and money market services.
The CIB division's net revenue - income excluding impairment losses on loans - rose 14 percent in the first half of this year to 6 billion rand (345.03 million pounds), and it expects to maintain that level of growth in the next few years.
About 80 percent of CIB's revenue is from traditional corporate operations such as transactional banking, trade finance and foreign exchange, but van Coller expects to see more fixed-income trading and derivatives business in coming years in countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana.
(Reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; Editing by Pravin Char)
