By Selena Li and Lawrence White
HONG KONG/LONDON, April 26 (Reuters) – Standard Chartered PLC (StanChart) said on Wednesday that its first-quarter pre-tax profit rose 21%, beating analysts’ estimates, as rising interest rates Interest boosted cash management revenue and sales of the emerging-markets-focused bank’s retail products.
StanChart, which gets most of its revenue from Asia, said its pre-tax profit for January-March reached $1.81 billion. This contrasts with $1.49 billion a year earlier, as well as the $1.43 billion median of 14 analyst estimates compiled by the bank.
Its chief executive, Bill Winters, said he now expects revenue to grow around 10% this year, at the high end of the range he had previously set.
This is the bank’s biggest quarterly profit since early 2014 as rising interest rates boosted loan income, while its financial markets brokerage division benefited from frenetic client activity against a of market volatility.
The StanChart results showed how rising central bank interest rates have boosted bank revenue, allowing it to charge more interest to borrowers, though without passing the entire increase on to depositors.
(Reporting by Selena Li and Lawrence White in London; editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing; editing in Spanish by Darío Fernández)
