Reasons to believe BarCap may have already seen the worst of the job cuts

Barclays Capital now has 1,400 fewer staff than this point last in 2010, has made 700 redundancies in the first half of the year, but the investment bank could be spared any more significant losses as the group implements another 1,600 job cuts this year.

Much like most other investment banks in the second quarter, BarCap's FICC revenues has fallen - but by a comparatively light 20%, to 3.9bn in the first half.

Equities and prime services, meanwhile, is up 5% on the back improved equity derivatives and financing revenue, while investment banking - BarCap's other area of expansion during the last two years - has increased by 11%. This is largely on the back of improved ECM and DCM activity, however.

Overall, pre-tax profit was down 9%, to 2.3bn, on this point last year.

Comparatively speaking, Barclays' job cut announcement has been light - it's implemented 1,400 redundancies this year already (700 in the investment bank) and intends to take that figure to 3,000 by the end of this year.

A lot of these cuts are expected to occur outside of the UK, though. Barclays intends to reduce headcount in its Spanish operation by 16% as it reduces its branch network.

Compensation costs remain a concern at the investment bank, however. The comp: income ratio is now at 45%, compared to 42% at this point last year, despite the reduction in headcount, but actual pay is falling.

This means an average compensation accrual of around 118k per employee so far in 2011, compared to 130k at this point last year - or a reduction of around 9%. The average income per employee, meanwhile, was 255k, which is down from 290k at this point last year.

BarCap's return on equity problem also appears to be abating. It reached 15% during the first half (up from 14% at this point last year, and 13% at the end of 2010). This is near its 2013 target of 15-16%.

Not surprisingly, though, a number of analysts during the conference call were asking whether BarCap had done enough to reduce expenses, particularly as the bank is predicting a second half as "challenging" as the first.

Jerry del Missier, co-chief executive of Barclays Capital, said the bank had identified cost savings late last year in anticipation of the tough environment this year (hence redundancies in January and only light trimming more recently), and that it didn't take decisions to reduce costs lightly.

There are, perhaps, some reasons for concern, however. Firstly, the bank targeted annual cost savings of 1bn in its investor day, but has now said that it's confident of exceeding that - possibly reaching the 2bn mark.

While the bank wasn't drawn on specifically where these cost savings would be achieved, it did point to "opportunities integrating corporate and investment banking".

Another potential problem is the fact it's now FICC revenues that are on the decline, while most of BarCap's earlier redundancies hit its equities team.