The Lemon Fool

Britain’s biggest banks will be able to increase shareholder payouts after the Bank of England removed restrictions imposed at the height of the pandemic to make sure lenders could weather deep losses.

The BOE said Tuesday that it is fully removing guardrails that limited dividends this year at HSBC Holdings Plc, Barclays Plc, Standard Chartered Plc and other top lenders. The central bank concluded the industry now has enough capital to resume payments as they wish.

The central bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority “concluded that the extraordinary guardrails within which it asked bank boards to determine the appropriate level of distributions in relation to full-year 2020 results are no longer necessary and have been removed with immediate effect,” according to a statement.