Standard Chartered Second-Quarter Profit Jumped 69%

   By Yifan Wang

Standard Chartered PLC said Tuesday that its profit jumped 69% in the second quarter, as the Asia-focused bank's recovery picked up on easing credit impairments.

The upbeat earnings from Standard Chartered followed results from peer HSBC Holdings PLC, which earlier this week said its second-quarter profit soared more than 10-fold, in a sign of the strength of Asia's economic rebound from the peak of the pandemic's impact last year.

Standard Chartered's first-quarter pretax underlying profit was $1.24 billion, compared with $733 million a year earlier.

The improvement was mainly driven by sharply lower impairments, as the bank became more optimistic about its business momentum.

Operating income fell to $3.69 billion from $3.72 billion, dragged by weaker net interest income after the governments of several Asian countries further cut rates in recent months amid a resurgence of Covid-19 infections in the region. Its net interest margin fell 0.06 percentage point to 1.22% in the period.

The bank resumed its interim dividend payment, after canceling the payout last year due to the pandemic, with 3 cents a share.

The lender said it expects impairment costs to remain low through the end of the year and guided for similar levels of income in 2021 versus last year.

Write to Yifan Wang at yifan.wang@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 03, 2021 01:04 ET (05:04 GMT)

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