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A non-dom at Rock

• Robert Peston
• 19 Feb 08, 02:23 PM

If anyone thinks the has it in for non-doms, those who reside here but shelter their overseas income and assets from UK tax, then I have a resonant example to the contrary. In fact I have a couple.

Because I have learned that , the former insurance executive to be executive chairman of the Rock, is a non-dom.

He has lived and worked here since the mid 1980s - and he pays tax on what he earns here. But he was brought up in Zimbabwe, has a German passport and holds assets overseas.

What's more, the woman he has chosen to be his chief financial officer, Ann Godbehere, is currently resident for tax purposes in Switzerland and is also likely to adopt non-dom status.

Sandler is being paid £90,000 a month at the Rock, and Godbehere's monthly salary will be £75,000. They are both intending to pay tax in the UK on their Rock remuneration.

So what does Sandler think about the Chancellor's plan's to levy a £30,000 yearly charge on all non-doms who have lived here for seven years? He won't be drawn.

And can you blame him for resisting the temptation to wade into the fraught debate about whether the Treasury's plans to raise taxes on non-doms will be good or bad for the economy? There'll be quite enough politics on his plate running the Rock as a nationalised bank.

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Barclays: can't win

• Robert Peston
• 19 Feb 08, 10:30 AM

Barclays share price has fallen by more than .

The value of its business has dropped by about £20bn in that period.

This is a business which investors believe is in some difficulties.

And who can blame them?

After all, its investment banking arm – – has been up to its neck in the business of turning smelly sub-prime loans into investments, collateralised debt obligations, that were supposed to smell of roses but turned out to be garbage after all.

But Barclays believes investors – especially short-selling hedge funds, who have been betting on a black hole emerging at Barclays – have got it plain wrong.

The bank’s annual results, the most eagerly awaited corporate health check of the year so far, describe a big international bank in reasonable shape.

And compared to its dumber-and-dumber international peers, of the US, of Switzerland and of France, it really doesn't look too bad at all.

Earnings are flat on a statutory basis and down a non-lethal 15% on its preferred "economic profit" measure.

Capital remains at adequate levels.

Some businesses, such as , are doing a bit better than might have been expected.

But there are quite a few buts.

First, its sub-prime related losses of £1.6bn are by no means life threatening, but can't be dismissed as trivial.

Second, the outlook for this business - as for all global banks with the bulk of their operations in the western economies - is rather worse than it was.

Third, Barclays retains billions in exposure to sub-prime, various forms of asset-backed securities and structure-finance products, monoline insurers, private-equity debt, or - to generalise - stuff that could yet turn bad.

And we had a timely warning today that even the biggest and most sophisticated banks can get their sums wrong, as has announced a £1.5bn reduction in the value of asset-backed, structured-finance positions.

The chilling bit of Credit Suisse's statement was that it had identified mismarkings and pricing errors by a small number of traders.

Or to put it another way, the people at the top of Credit Suisse didn't have a firm grip on what its brainbox traders were really up to.

It's that kind of failure which explains why investors have so little faith in any big and sophisticated bank right now.

And it goes some way to explain why Barclays' shares have actually fallen today - even though it defied the doom-mongers and raised its dividend by 10%, rather than doing what many feared, which was to raise new capital.

Its shares are yielding around 8%. And all that tells you is that the market still believes that the risk in owning the shares remains pretty high.

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