Revenue from Standard Bank's African operations is still under pressure as Nigeria's economy struggles and the commodities recovery remains on the sluggish side. "Overall, Standard Bank produced a solid set of results in a macro environment that was extremely weak in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa during the period as well as [getting] a very poor result from Liberty Holdings," said Adrian Cloete, portfolio manager at PSG Wealth. Liberty's R1.5-billion headline loss resulted in parent Standard Bank's headline earnings growing only 3.7% compared with 8.5% growth from its banking operations. Standard Bank owns 55% of Liberty. One had to strip out a lot from lenders' results to get down to the banking numbers, said Brad Preston, chief investment officer at Mergence. "With Nedbank you have to take out Ecobank and with Standard Bank you have to take out Liberty to get a view of what the pure banking operations did," he said. After a banking crisis that led to an alarming number of K...
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