Standard Chartered to return ₹13,000 crore to shareholders: Here's why
Standard Chartered will be returning $1.5 billion (over ₹13,000 crore to shareholders, a decision it announced after announcing fourth-quarter earnings.
Standard Chartered Plc has announced that it will be returning $1.5 billion (over ₹13,000 crore) to shareholders. This comes after the company's fourth-quarter earnings outperformed estimates on the back of a strong performance in trading and wealth business.
The bank announced a buyback which would being the total money returned to shareholders since 2023 to $4.9 billion.
“We are delivering what we promised our shareholders, which is sustainably higher returns from a high growth business,” Chief Financial Officer Diego De Giorgi said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “We have had good performance — but we’ll keep our eye on the ball and continue executing and hope the market will continue to reward us. But there is more to do no doubt,” he said.
Notably, the bank's shares have risen above the level they were at when CEO Bill Winters took over the company about a year ago. Last year, he had called the bank’s share price “crap” for languishing for far too long.
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Standard Chartered's strength in numbers
The stock’s value has almost doubled since then and is now trading at £11.40 — higher than the £10.41 level at which it had closed on Winters’ first day on the job back in June 2015.
Standard Chartered’s adjusted pretax profit came in at $1.05 billion for the three months through December, surpassing the Bloomberg-compiled analyst estimate of $1.02 billion.
Operating income from global markets jumped 45% in the fourth quarter, thanks to a strong performance in macro and credit trading, while it rose 36% in wealth solutions. The lender said 265,000 clients were on-boarded in 2024, and it lured $44 billion of net new money, driven by strong international flows.
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The bank, which makes most of its money in Asia and the Middle East, is in the midst of a corporate cost-saving program known as “Fit for Growth” that is forecast to see it invest about $1.5 billion in a range of initiatives to make it more efficient.
About 10% of the cost of the program was accounted for in 2024, and a half is expected to come this year, according to De Giorgi. Since the launch of the program, the bank has mobilized over 200 projects during 2024, the lender said.
