BARCLAYS Plc, the United Kingdom's third-biggest bank, may need to raise as much as 7.5 billion pounds (US$13.3 billion) to bring its capital ratio in line with investment banking peers, according to Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc analysts.

While the London-based bank's tangible common equity was in line with the industry, it was low compared with securities firms, the analysts, led by Ian Smillie, wrote in a research note to clients yesterday obtained by Bloomberg News.

"A deeply ingrained performance-led culture facilitated the generation of 8.3 billion pounds of economic profit over the last four years," Smillie said. "It has, however, also led Barclays to a higher level of balance-sheet gearing than peers, an uncomfortable position in the current environment of financial system de-leveraging and heightened external scrutiny of banks' balance sheets."

Barclays raised 4.5 billion pounds in a share sale in July to help shore up capital depleted by credit writedowns and fund consumer-banking growth overseas.

The bank's fund raising lifted its so-called Tier 1 capital ratio, which measures a bank's ability to absorb losses, to about 6.3 percent. The bank's "large and growing equity shortfall" may mean it has to sell more shares, Smillie said.