Barclays capital ratios to be hurt by new capital rules

LONDON Aug 30 (Reuters) - British bank Barclays Plc said its trading in August was ahead of a year ago, but estimated its core capital ratio would dip by more than 2 percentage points under tougher capital rules coming into force next year.

Chris Lucas, finance director, said on Thursday the bank's core Tier One capital ratio should be about 11.3 percent at the end of this year, but would drop to about 9.2 percent after factoring in the impact of Basel III rules on its risk-weighted assets (RWA).

The ratio would improve to 10.3 percent by the end of 2013 based on forecast earnings, Lucas said, but added that more rules to be phased in between 2014 and 2018 could knock another 60 basis points off the ratio.

Under "fully loaded" Basel III rules, the bank's core capital at the end of June would have been 7.9 percent, he said.

Barclays is one of Europe's best capitalised banks and the estimates did not include action it could take to mitigate the impact of the new rules, but the comments show the effect the tougher rules will have across the industry.

Lucas was speaking at the Nomura Financial Services conference, hours after Barclays named its retail banking boss Antony Jenkins as new chief executive.