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January 19, 2007
Barclays Buys the Naming Rights for Nets' NBA Arena
Bloomberg.com
By Mason Levinson and Jon Menon
Bloomberg Media covers the Barclays-Forest City Ratner naming-rights deal from a business perspective, including market analysis and quotes:
Barclays Plc, Britain's third- largest bank by market value, bought the right to name the New Jersey Nets' future Brooklyn, New York, arena for 20 years to boost its brand in the U.S.
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Barclays is expanding operations in the U.S., which contributed about 17 percent of the bank's pretax profit in the first half of 2006, said analyst Michael Helsby at Fox-Pitt, Kelton Ltd. in London. A third of the earnings at Barclays Capital, the investment banking unit, arise from the U.S., according to an estimate from Helsby."The deal is clearly aimed at the financial community in New York,'' said Simon Maughan, a London-based analyst at Blue Oak Capital Ltd. "They have been pushing Barclays Capital in the U.S. and this is clearly taking it to the next stage.''
Barclays agreed to pay a record of almost $400 million over 20 years in the agreement, the New York Times said today, without saying where it got the information. The Nets' naming- rights agreement with Barclays is the third in the New York area in less than three months.
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In the first half, Barclays posted a 66 percent increase in pretax profit to 1.25 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) at Barclays Capital and a 51 percent jump in profit at Barclays Global Investors, the global leader in assets and products in exchange traded funds."They are an international operation and they want to develop a brand that is recognized globally,'' said Guy de Blonay, an analyst at New Star Asset Management, who holds the stock and helps manages about $34 billion. "Maybe they could merge with a strong U.S. domestic player.''
Barclays, which also owns a credit card unit in the U.S., sold its main U.S. consumer banking operations in the late 1980s.
Posted by lumi at January 19, 2007 1:46 PM