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		</div><p>Barclays has completed the sale of its Spanish and Portuguese credit card business as the bank charges ahead with asset disposals as part of a company-wide overhaul.</p>
<p>The bank said that its £1.2bn Barclaycard consumer payments business was &#8220;sold at a small premium&#8221; to Spanish online bank WiZink.</p>
<p>WiZink, previously known as Bancopopular-e, is owned by Varde Partners and Spain&#8217;s Banco Popular.</p>
<p>Barclays has been working to sell down and dispose of its hinterland business as quickly as possible in order to focus on core US and UK operations.<br />
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<p>The bank said that the sale of its Spanish and Portuguese credit card business will help reduce its risk-weighted assets by £1bn.</p>
<p>The sale, which was originally announced in April 2016 and will see WiZink acquire nearly 800,000 customers, has been given the green light by regulators.</p>
<p>In a statement released on Friday, Barclays said it would continue to offer corporate and investment banking services in both Spain and Portugal, calling them <i>&#8220;important elements&#8221;</i> of the bank&#8217;s franchise.</p>
<p>Barclays Group chief executive Jes Staley said: <i>&#8220;The Barclaycard consumer payments business in Portugal and Spain is a good business with a highly talented and dedicated workforce but no longer fits with our strategic ambitions. I am sure it will continue to thrive as part of WiZink.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>Mr Staley added that the sale marks <i>&#8220;further tangible progress towards our target of reducing Non-Core Risk Weighted Assets to c.£23bn in 2017&#8221;.</i></p>
<p>The overhaul has also seen the bank sell down its 62.3% stake in Barclays Africa, and offload its risk analytics and index unit to Bloomberg for about £615m.</p>
<p>In October, Barclays announced plans to sell its Egyptian business to Attijariwafa Bank for a price understood to be about $500m (then £392m).</p>
<p>The bank&#8217;s strategic overhaul is part of plans to shore up the bank&#8217;s balance sheet.</p>
<p>Last month, Barclays reported a drop in net operating income fell to £4.7bn in the third quarter, down from £5bn a year earlier, and said it was setting aside an additional $600m (currently £482m) to meet compensation claims for mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI).</p>
<p>It brought the total provisions over the past two quarters alone to £1bn.<br />
Barclays is also suffering under the weight of a ballooning pension deficit, now worth £1.1bn.</p>
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