Loanbook buyers have their first target for 2016: Barclays Australia.
After a frantic few years snapping up loans from retreating European and US banks - and divisions such as Esanda Dealer Finance out of Australia's Big Four - the bidders have moved on to Barclays in the hope of picking up another bargain. 
"Everyone is looking at it," one source told Street Talk. That's believed to include the likes of Macquarie Group's Corporate and Asset Finance Group, credit funds such as Sankaty Advisors and its offshore rivals, the big private equity groups and investments banks such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.
The funds have started by looking at the exposures. Consensus seems to be the book is high quality - and has a lot of loans that only banks can hold such as revolving credit facilities. It is not distressed - Barclays' Australian retreat is more a cost reduction exercise rather than the balance sheet reductions that happened in the local offices of UK peers Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. Sources said Barclays had a lot of loans out to resources companies - the same sorts of names on the books of Australia's Big Four banks and the major offshore lenders - and only one financial institution.
While there appears to be plenty of interest, the problem is the mixed messages going to potential acquirers about whether or not the $20 billion loanbook is coming to market.
It's understood some have been told the book is likely to be run down, rather than sold, managed out of Barclays Asian office and continue to be used as a tool to get debt capital markets mandates.
The tyre-kicking comes after Barclays executed a rapid exit from the Australian market last week and as flagged by Street Talk. The withdrawal, alongside the bank's exit from other markets in Asia, is part of push by newly-installed chief executive Jes Staley to focus more on the bank's most profitable lines of business.