Across the Gulf region, most conventional lenders and Islamic banks cleaned up their balance sheets from the debris of the financial crisis and switched to the expansion gear.
According to the corporate banking benchmarking report published by advisory firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG) earlier on Friday, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banks' corporate banking divisions are at peak levels in terms of revenues and net profits. "They even crossed the pre-crisis levels seen in 2008," said the analysis.
Local lenders in the six GCC countries, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, benefitted from relative political stability at home, capital outflows in turmoil-struck Arab nations such as Egypt or Syria, and ongoing high oil prices which gained 15.34 percent per barrel in U.S. crude over the last 12 months.
TAILWINDS FOR GROWTH
Thanks to these tailwinds, GCC lenders expand at home and abroad as an announcement in recent months. Net profits of GCC banks increased in the first quarter by 7 percent year on year to hit 4.6 billion U.S. dollars amid a rise in loan activity and rising deposit volumes.
The UAE topped the first quarter ranking with profits edging up by 18.7 percent, followed by their counterparts in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, where net income increased year on year by 7.3 percent, 2.6 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.
In Saudi Arabia, the biggest GCC country, lending increased in the first four months by nearly 5.5 percent to 1.05 trillion Saudi riyal (283.5 million U.S. dollars), the Saudi Gazette reported in June.
Source : Xinhua
