StanChart collects the fruits of its restructuring

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Standard Chartered (LON:STAN) announced on Wednesday that a taxable profit, an increase of 20% and higher than consensus first quarter due to strong growth in demand for credit and the improvement of the quality of its assets.

Under the leadership of general manager Bill Winters, the bank, which is mainly found in Asia, Africa and the middle East, has undertaken since 2015 a major restructuring which resulted, among other things, the resumption of the payment of dividends.

The taxable income of 1.26 billion dollars (1.05 billion euros) compared to 1.05 billion a year earlier and a consensus of nine analysts compiled by the bank itself of 1.21 billion.

The operating income grew 7% to $ 3.9 billion.

Write-downs of financial assets, net were comparable to those of the first quarter of 2017, but declined by 29% relative to those for the last quarter of the past year.

StanChart unveiled in February a new goal of 8% return on equity in the medium term; in the first quarter, annualized return was 7.6% compared to 6.3% in the first quarter of 2017.

“This encouraging start to the year shows that we are definitely on the way, opened in February and that will lead to a return on equity of over 8% in the medium term,” said Winters.

The bad debt had downgraded the bank’s balance sheet in the past, but it constitutes the framework for more rigorous decision-making on large credits and attenuated on the other hand the supervision of the credit to a single customer.

The action StanChart Hong Kong-listed gaining nearly 1%, while the index of this stock Exchange loses 0,65% in the same time.

(Sumeet Chatterjee, Emma Rumney and Lawrence White; Wilfrid Exbrayat for the French service)