Morgan Stanley, trading saves first quarter accounts
In the first quarter Morgan Stanley, the last of the major American banks to publish its first quarter accounts, saw a decline in profit (-19%) and turnover (-2%), but still beat analysts’ forecasts, thanks to the higher-than-estimated performance of its trading activities . In the three months to March, the bank delivered profits of $2.98 billion, $1.70 per share, versus $3.66 billion, $2.02 per share, in the same period last year.
I Net revenues they stood at 14.517 billion, against the previous 14.801 billion. Analysts were expecting profits of $1.62 per share on average, with a turnover of $13.92 billion. “The company has delivered solid results, with a Rotce of approximately 17% (16.9% to be exact), in a very unusual environment, demonstrating the robustness of the business model,” said the chief executive James Gormanexplaining that “investments made in the wealth management business continued to bear fruit with net new assets of $110 billion.”
Gorman said “Equities and fixed income performance was also strong, although the assets of investment banking we continued to be limited”. The bank “has maintained solid capital levels (the standardized Cet 1 ratio was 15.1%) and remains well positioned to deliver long-term value to shareholders”.