Figures in the past week from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), HSBC (HSBA) and Standard Chartered (STAN) marked the end of first-quarter trading updates from the UK's listed banks. They revealed decent growth from internationally-focused HSBC and Standard Chartered - in stark contrast to a lacklustre performance from UK-focused RBS.
As with Lloyds (LLOY) and Barclays (BARC), RBS avoided further PPI-related provisions and its impairment charge followed sectoral trends, down 21 per cent year on year - helped by improvements at its struggling Ulster Bank operation. But first-quarter group operating profit still dropped 28 per cent year-on-year to £829m and fell short of analysts' consensus estimates. That reflected weak trading and downsizing at the markets division, where profit slumped from last year's £826m to £294m.
In contrast, HSBC's underlying first-quarter pre-tax profit jumped 34 per cent to $7.6bn (£4.9bn), driven by solid growth across most of its operations and a hefty 51 per cent slide in the impairment charge - reflecting a big improvement at the US consumer credit operation. HSBC boasts a robust 12.7 per cent core tier one capital ratio, too. And, while Standard Chartered saw some margin pressure, and higher consumer banking impairments, it delivered double-digit growth in its core Hong Kong market.
