Foreign news: Santander UK CFO quits, Visa earns its Stripes, Barclays profits rise, and more

Banking Day staff
  • Santander UK chief financial officer Stephen Jones has quit the bank, citing a delay in the long-planned float of the bank as his reason for leaving. Spanish bank Santander has listed subsidiaries in Brazil, Mexico and the United States, and the listing of the UK subsidiary was to have been next cab off the rank. However a change of management in Spain is said to have led to a re-think. Jones told the Financial Times that he joined the bank in 2011 primarily to help prepare the IPO.

  • Visa has made an investment in payments company Stripe and will work with the company to develop "new e-commerce experiences". Visa did not disclose the extent of its investment in Stripe, which started operations in Australia a year ago. Stripe will be a beta partner with Visa, meaning it will have access to Visa's network and technology tools. Visa's local head of product, Rob Walls, said the focus of the partnership would be in emerging markets "where a lot of merchants struggle to get online". On the local scene Stripe will work with the developer community to incorporate Visa's new tokenisation system into payment services.

  • Barclays has reported a 25 per cent rise in statutory pre-tax profits to £3.1 billion for the six months to the end of June, according to the BBC. The bank also set aside a further £850 million to compensate customers, bringing to the total set aside for PPI mis-selling to £6 billion. This is in addition to £800 million set aside in April, largely to cover further potential legal action and penalties for alleged foreign exchange manipulation. Barclays said it had also set aside £250 million for customer refunds for its "packaged" bank accounts, the BBC reports.

  • The European Banking Authority has started circulating draft guidelines "to promote a consistent and coherent approach" to cooperation agreements between the deposit guarantee schemes across the European Union. To ensure financial stability in the EU, given the cross-border nature of many of its credit institutions, one objective is to come to an agreed position in writing on what steps to take when a credit institution fails and there is a need to pay out depositors. The consultation runs until 29 October 2015.