Barclays grows annual profit by 10 percent, restores dividend

LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays PLC on Thursday reported its annual profit for 2017 rose 10 percent from the year before, and pledged to restore its full dividend with a payout of 6.5 pence per share in 2018.

Barclays posted a pretax profit of 3.5 billion pounds ($4.86 billion), up from 3.2 billion pounds a year ago but worse than the 4.7 billion pound average of analysts' forecasts compiled by the bank.

Some of those forecasts had not been updated to take into account a 901 million pound tax writedown in the United States.

Barclays in December forecast the tax hit, which was caused by a reform to the tax system in the U.S. signed into law by President Donald Trump. The reform forces banks to reduce the value of their deferred tax assets.

The bank said it had no update on the outcome of a probe by Britain's banking regulators into Chief Executive Jes Staley's attempts to unmask a whistleblower last year.

($1 = 0.7204 pounds)

(Reporting By Lawrence White and Emma Rumney, editing by Sinead Cruise)