A stitch in time

Barclays has provided a tonic to jittery investors, with ice and lemon on top. The UK bank’s shares fell to a three-year low earlier this month on fears that the credit crunch had landed its Barclays Capital investment bank a £5bn punch. In fact, in showing its hit is less than one-third if that, the bank has given a lesson in managing the credit crunch. Sure, Barcap’s £1.3bn writedown for the July-October period represents a sharp deterioration. The division’s impairment charges were less than...