Banks set to defy gloom and restart dividends | Business

Britain’s biggest publicly listed banks are set to shrug off falling profits to announce a resumption of dividend payments of about £5 billion after a year’s pause.

Progress on vaccines and hopes that interest rate margins may start to widen have modestly improved sentiment among bank executives, despite them building an arsenal of provisions for debts that they expect to turn sour.

Barclays kicks off the bank reporting season on Thursday, with analysts pencilling in a 3.5p dividend worth over £600 million. That comes despite expected pre-tax profits of £2.8 billion for 2020, down from £4.4 billion in 2019.

Total profits of the five big listed banks — the four high street players plus the London-listed Standard Chartered — are forecast to be £11.7 billion