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Welcome to the latest edition of The Euromoney 25. For our Class of 2018, we have once again scrutinised our group of 25 of the world’s biggest global banks to give a qualitative and quantitative snapshot of their progress over the last 12 months.
The individual progress reports for each bank can be accessed through the panel on the left, but, as in 2017, we have also pulled out seven key metrics across the group of 25, displayed in the charts below. And on the basis of the first three quarters of 2018, before the year-end wobble that has continued into 2019, most measures were up compared to the same period 12 months earlier.
The progress reports
Bank of America
Barclays
BBVA
BNP Paribas
Bradesco
CCB
Citi
Credit Suisse
DBS
Deutsche Bank
First Abu Dhabi
Goldman Sachs
HSBC
ICBC
Itau Unibanco
JPMorgan
Morgan Stanley
MUFG
Qatar National Bank
Royal Bank of Canada
Santander
Societe Generale
Standard Chartered
UBS
UniCredit
But there were the usual reporting challenges. Banks vary hugely in their reporting practices, all the way from the clarity of a Deutsche Bank historic quarterly spreadsheet to the trickier-to-parse numbers from Japan and Brazil – the latter continuing to offer complications even in the presentation of revenues.
We have stuck with the same seven metrics as last year: group revenues, group pre-tax profits, total assets, cost-to-income ratio, return on equity (ROE), return on assets and common equity tier-1 (CET1) ratios. And we have stayed with almost the same group of banks, the only change being the introduction of China Construction Bank in place of Bank of China.
Taken as a whole, things are on the up for our motley band. Total revenues rose 5%, profits by 11% and assets by 3%. Cost-to-income ratios improved on average, but by less than one percentage point. The median return on assets rose about 10 basis points to just a shade under 1%. Median ROE rose 1.4 percentage points, while the average passed through 11.5%.
CET1 ratios are the one outlier, with the median falling about 40bp to 12.48% and the average down 46bp to 12.77%.
Banks continue to shun return on assets in their own reporting – 14 of our 25 do not break it out in their regular earnings statements. There continue to be variations in the way in which banks report ROE (if they do at all), with some using adjusted profits and others tweaking the equity part of the calculation in various ways. We have taken reported ROE numbers because they are still directionally meaningful in aggregate.
All numbers are either for the first nine calendar months of the year or as at September 30. For those banks whose fiscal years do not match calendar years (RBC and MUFG), we have used the closest comparable periods.
Disclaimers
• All data as reported unless indicated by *
• Figures within any category may not be precisely comparable between banks if reported numbers use adjustments
• Where ROA not reported, calculated by net income/average total assets
• Where cost/income ratio not reported, calculated by operating expenses / revenues
• MUFG fiscal year runs to end-March: i.e. fiscal year 2018 begins April 2017. RBC fiscal year runs to end-October.
• CET1 figures are transitional. Where a bank reports Advanced and Standardized, the lower is shown
• Assets, revenues and profit figures converted to dollars using the FX rate at September 30, 2018.
The data
