While investors have become used to viewing Chinese banks as lookalike state-owned behemoths, their latest batch of earnings was notable for the growing divergence in their strategies and fortunes.
Two of the biggest – Bank of China and Bank of Communications – delivered upsets, showing that the main risk for Chinese banks in the near term is not sector-wide problems but rather the business environments unique to each institution, analysts said.
In past quarters, the results from country’s leading banks tended to cluster together, converging on annual profit growth of about 30 per cent. From July to September, though, wider gaps opened.