Reading through the bank’s annual results it is not hard to find the black sheep of the Barclays family. They were not: UK retail banking, Barclaycard, Barclays Africa, Absa (the bank’s South African franchise), Barclays Wealth, investment management or Barclays Capital, which all increased pre-tax profits last year.

In the case of the investment banking division, there was a 94% increase from £2.5bn in 2009 to £4.8bn in 2010.