Barclays, UBS rise on Royal Scottish's not-too-shabby showing

Posted Dec 6th 2007 3:45PM by Zack Miller
Filed under: Barclays plc ADS (BCS)

Marketwatch reported this morning on the Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE: RBS)'s earnings event. Shares surged upwards to the tune of 7.3% on news that the U.K.'s second-largest bank expects operating profit and earnings per share to be "well ahead" of the market consensus.

I wrote yesterday about the U.K.'s real fear that the subprime meltdown that the U.S. is experiencing may rear its ugly head in the U.K. throughout 2008. RBS' relatively cheery (actually, just not as bad as everyone was predicting) forecast relieved some of the stress on the financial industry this morning.

In the same article, Marketwatch reported that RBS said "Credit market troubles in the second half of the year are expected to result in write-downs of 950 million pounds ($1.96 billion) on its exposure to subprime mortgages, which was lower than many analysts had forecast." This news drove up the shares of Barclays (NYSE: BCS), UBS (NYSE: UBS), and CSFB (NYSE: CS) -- three other banks pushed down by the overhang of a massive mortgage rate reset.

Zack Miller is Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Author has no position in any stock mentioned as of 12/04/07.

Tags: bcs, cs, CSFB, earnings, inthenews, rbs, Royal Bank of Scotland, RoyalBankOfScotland, subprime, ubs