Barclays to buy Egg credit card assets

Barclays is to buy the British credit card assets of online bank Egg from US lender Citigroup for an undisclosed price, as part of plans to boost its retail banking business.

By The Newsroom

Published 2nd Mar 2011, 06:00 BST

Barclays said the assets consisted of 1.15 million accounts with approximately £2.3bn of gross receivables.

“Based on current projections, we expect the transaction to exceed the financial return targets set out at our recent results announcement,” finance director Chris Lucas said.

Last month, Barclays said that it was targeting a return on equity of 13 per cent and planned to cut annual costs by £1bn by 2013.

Barclays will integrate the Egg accounts into its Barclaycard credit card division.

Barclays