“Curious” and “largely cosmetic” were two of the opinions among analysts on Thursday as they sought to explain Barclays’ decision to sell more than $12.3bn of risky credit assets to a new company. Barclays loaned the new company, Protium, the money to buy the assets, thus replacing the volatility surrounding risky assets with regular cash flows from interest payments. The question, say analysts, is whether the merits of protecting against further problems with the assets outweigh the amount of upside being handed to the new fund.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 4:39 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with barclays, Protium. Edit this entry.