Barclays puts aside further £800m to cover currency-rigging scandal fines

New sum bring total bill up to £2b, overshadowing quarterly profits up 9%

Barclays has put aside a further £800 million to cover the cost of fines from the currency rigging scandal, taking the total bill towards £2 billion.

The bank opted out of an overall settlement over the forex market fixing claims last year when six rivals paid a total of £2.6 billion to settle with global regulators.

Last month it topped up its provisions for a possible settlement and today's £800 million addition to that pot takes the total funds reserved for the issue to over £2 billion.

“Resolving legacy conduct issues is also an important part of our plan to transform Barclays. We are working hard to expedite their settlement,” chief executive Antony Jenkins said in a statement.

Barclays also said it had allocated another £150 million for PPI redress based on updated estimates in the cost of compensating customers wrongly sold the product.

The bank also reported first quarter figures, including a 9% rise in underlying pre-tax profit to £1.85 billion on the back of a stronger performance by its investment bank.

It follows a large scale restructuring of the investment bank which involved exiting businesses and axeing thousands of jobs.