 Profits and balance sheet developments at U.S. commercial banks in 1998Antulio Bomfim and William R. Nelson Federal Reserve Bulletin, 1999, vol. 85, issue Jun, 369-395 Abstract: The performance of the U.S. commercial banking industry remained strong in 1998, but slipped a bit from the remarkable results of recent years. Both the return on assets and the return on equity edged down last year, although they remained high by historical standards. While supported by growth in fee income, profitability was damped by a large decline in the rates banks earned on their interest-bearing assets relative to the rates they paid on their liabilities, and also by higher noninterest costs, especially merger and restructuring expenses. Profitability was uneven last year across bank sizes: Whereas the largest and the smallest banks posted lower earnings, the profits of medium-sized banks--which account for almost two-thirds of industry assets--improved once again in 1998. Nevertheless, though these figures attest to the profitability of most banks, the share of bank assets at unprofitable institutions increased 2 percentage points, to 2.6 percent, the highest since 1994. Keywords: Banks and banking; Bank profits; Bank assets (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedgrb:y:1999:i:jun:p:369-395:n:v.85no.6 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.17016/bulletin.1999.85-6 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Federal Reserve Bulletin from Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.