The announcement was made as Barclays reported a Q1 profit of £793m, down 25% year on year, but better than the £2.1bn loss it made in Q4 of 2015.
Barclays’ French retail banking and wealth business operations have a 74-strong branch network covering banking services such as current accounts, deposits and mortgages, as well as a variety of products including life insurance and wealth management.
Barclays said it would continue to have a presence with its corporate and investment banking activities in France.
Chief executive Jes Staley said the bank would accelerate the pace of progress in reducing non-core exposure, which has also seen it pushing ahead with plans to sell its African banking business.
Earlier this month, Barclays announced plans to pull out of Gibraltar.
AnaCap’s second French investment
AnaCap’s banking investments comprise Aldermore in the UK; MeDirect in Belgium; Mediterranean Bank in Malta; Equa bank in the Czech Republic; and FM Bank in Poland.
In a statement, AnaCap said that the acquisition would mark the firm’s second French investment, following the buyout of AssurOne Group, a digital insurance broker, in 2014.
Nassim Cherchali, director of AnaCap, said it was an “opportunity to acquire an attractive and established banking operation” and that it had a strong track record within the private equity industry for acquiring and growing banking platforms across the continent.
On the Barclays Q1 results, Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said Barclays had joined Standard Chartered in the camp of beating low expectations for the first quarter.
“Investors were braced for some pain from the investment bank, and this duly materialised. However the market may be willing to look beyond the reduction in trading income, the restructuring costs, and the impairments from the oil and gas sector as temporary impositions.”
She added that the non-core division, which Barclays is gradually winding down, provided a further drag on performance, with a loss of £815m.
