LONDON (Reuters) – The Bank of England on Tuesday scrapped pandemic-era curbs on dividends from HSBC, Barclays and other top lenders, saying its stress test showed the sector is well capitalised to cope with the fallout from COVID on the economy.
The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee said the “extraordinary guardrails on shareholder distributions are no longer necessary and judges that the interim results of the 2021 solvency stress test, together with the central outlook, are consistent with this decision”.
(Reporting by Huw Jones and David Milliken)