London-headquartered Standard Chartered saw its full year 2023 (FY 2023) profits rise 19% to $5.09 billion with overall revenue growing 10% to $17.38 billion, according to a company results announcement on February 23, 2024.
Across the year the bank took a $850 million impairment from its stake in Chinese lender Bohai Bank, based in Tianjin, as the downturn in the Chinese property market continued. This included a $153 million hit in Q4 2023.
The hit in China came days after HSBC announced a $3 billion impairment charge against its investment in China's Bank of Communications in Q4 2023, despite the UK bank reporting a record pre-tax profit of $30.3 billion for the year.
Comenting on the results, Bill Winters, Standard Chartered’s group chief executive, said in a statement: “We produced strong results in 2023, continuing to demonstrate the value of our franchise and delivering our financial objective of a 10% RoTE for the year.”
He added: “We will now build on this success, taking action to deliver sustainably higher returns with a focus on driving income growth and improving operational leverage and targeting 12% RoTE in 2026. We have increased full year dividends, up 50%, and have announced a new $1 billion share buyback, bringing our total shareholder distributions to $5.5 billion since January 2022. We will continue to actively manage the group’s capital position with a target to return at least $5 billion over the next three years.”
Part of the plan is a scheme called the 'Fit For Growth' strategy to save around $1.5 billion in expenses over the next three years as the bank tries to turn around its flagging share price.
After tax profit for FY 2023 climbed 19% at Standard Chartered to $3.46 billion, compared with FY 2022.
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