巴克莱分拆或步雷曼后尘

    这段时间，银行业成为众矢之的。在金融危机几乎让全球经济重返石器时代后，政府与银行间的紧张关系一度得到缓和，如今缓和期显然已经结束。电视上银行业高管在接受议会质询，监管机构也收紧了对银行的约束力度。

    当然，所有这些丑闻中最严重的仍属巴克莱操纵伦敦银行同业拆借利率（Libor）事件。作为关键的银行参考利率，Libor是众多贷款的基准利率，涉及数以万亿美元的贷款。虽然巴克莱（Barclays）已支付4.50亿美元与美国、英国的监管机构就此案达成和解，分析师们估计该行仍面临受影响方提起的多达几十宗诉讼，潜在损失将达10亿-100亿美元左右。

    Libor丑闻已导致巴克莱首席营运官、董事长和首席执行官引咎辞职。当巴克莱走出此次丑闻时，它不会再是原来的巴克莱。但近段时间，巴克莱一直在试图理清做出怎样的转变。

    在美国人罗伯特（鲍勃）•戴蒙德的领导下，这家英国零售银行晋身华尔街最大的金融公司之一。这一过程全赖2008年雷曼兄弟（Lehman Brothers）破产后戴蒙德购入的雷曼核心业务。戴蒙德以区区17.5亿美元就从一息尚存的雷曼兄弟胸膛中挖走了它的“心脏”业务——北美投资银行业务。而且，还无需吞下很多有毒的垃圾资产。

    接下来的三年，戴蒙德向这块投资银行业务投入数百万美元，成败参半。虽然今年3月前还被称为巴克莱资本（Barclays Capital）的这块业务是盈利的，2011年为该行贡献利润约半，但它的净资产回报率并不很高，换言之，资产效率不是很高。据一位了解状况的人士称，巴克莱在打造并购业务方面确实取得了一些成功，去年在并购交易排行榜中位列第五，但该项业务盈利甚微（如果还盈利的话）。

    巴克莱投行部门表现最突出的是固定收益交易业务，而且大部分都购自雷曼。在固定收益交易排行榜中，巴克莱一直排名第二，仅次于银行业巨头摩根大通（JP Morgan）。2011年，固定收益交易贡献了巴克莱投行部门大部分利润。那一年，固定收益交易利润约50亿美元，占到全行利润总额的53%。考虑到戴蒙德买下雷曼兄弟资质优良的北美资产总共才花了17.5亿美元，这可真不赖。

    但Libor丑闻盖过了戴蒙德担任首席执行官期间取得的所有这些成就。固定收益产品采用多项指标作为基准，最常见的就是Libor。因此，不难想见巴克莱银行至少有部分（如果不是大部分）利润与其操纵Libor有某种关联。法庭可能会将这些利润归为某种形式的不正当收益进行追缴或处以高额罚金。

    鉴于这样的状况，无怪乎巴克莱董事会据称正在考虑将投资银行与稳定且盈利相当的商业银行业务分拆开来。过去谈起分拆是担心投行业务作为巴克莱金融超市的一部分可能被低估。现在显然不是这样的情况。

    The banks are really under fire these days. The temporary detente between the government and the banks, which was agreed to after the financial crisis nearly sent the world back into the economic Stone Age, is clearly over. Bank chieftains are being hauled on TV to be heckled by Congress and regulators are tightening the noose around their necks.

    But, of course, the mother of all scandals continues to be Barclays' manipulation of Libor, the key bank reference rate used in setting the borrowing costs for trillions of dollars worth of loans. While Barclays (BCS) has already paid $450 million to settle the case with U.S. and UK regulators, analysts believe that the bank could still face dozens of lawsuits from affected parties, potentially exposing the bank to losses in the range of around $1 billion to as much as $10 billion.

    The scandal has already claimed the bank's chief operating officer, chairman and chief executive. When Barclays reemerges from this scandal it will not be the same bank. But Barclays has been trying to figure out what it is for some time now.

    Under the stewardship of Robert (Bob) Diamond, this very British retail bank became one of the most powerful financial players on Wall Street. Diamond, who is American, achieved this by gutting Lehman Brothers in 2008 after it had declared bankruptcy. Diamond managed to rip Lehman's heart out of its still beating chest by acquiring the North American investment banking division for just $1.75 billion. And he was able to do it without having to absorb a lot of the toxic junk.

    Diamond spent the next three years pumping millions of dollars into the investment banking business, which was known up until this March as Barclays Capital, with mixed success. While the division was profitable, making around half of the bank's earnings in 2011, it still didn't have a strong return on equity, meaning it wasn't very efficient. It did have some success in building a mergers and acquisition franchise, placing number five on the M&A league tables last year, but the division was barely, if at all, profitable, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

    Where the investment bank stood out was in its fixed income trading business, most of which was acquired from Lehman. The division consistently ranks second in the league tables for fixed income deals done, just behind banking giant JP Morgan (JPM). Fixed income trading contributed the lion's share of the profits that were attributed to the investment bank in 2011. That year the division made around $5 billion, 53% of the bank's total profit. That's not bad considering that Diamond bought all of Lehman's good North American assets for just $1.75 billion.

    But all the success that Diamond achieved during his tenure as chief executive has essentially been wiped out thanks to the what is being called the Li(E)bor scandal. Fixed income products use a variety of metrics, most notably Libor, as a benchmark. It would therefore not be a stretch to assume that some, if not a good portion of the bank's profits can in some way tangentially be linked to its playing with Libor. The courts could possibly label those profits ill-gotten gains of some sort and either claw back or slap the bank with a heavy fine.

    With all this drama it's no wonder Barclays' board is reportedly thinking about hiving off the investment bank from its quiet and equally profitable commercial bank. Talk about splitting the bank up in the past has rested on concerns that the investment bank was undervalued as part of the Barclays financial supermarket. That's clearly not the case here.