European bank traders achieve the best results in more than a decade

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Traders in the largest investment banks in Europe have achieved their highest quarterly revenues for less than a decade, after Trump’s fluctuation in the financial markets sparked madness from activity on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

UBS, BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Barclays and Deutsche Bank have been reported in recent weeks about the availability of 13 billion euros combined of stocks and fixed income trading between January and March, which is the highest quarterly quarterly for the five lenders since 2015 at least.

The performance of European banks reflects the revenues of the stellar trading that our peers published in the United States during the first three months of the year, as the five largest banks in Wall Street earn nearly $ 37 billion in joint trading revenues during this period.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump entered into a period of economic uncertainty, which led to wild fluctuations in stocks, bonds and currency that created opportunities for merchants to exploit.

“Market fluctuations are widely supported by the global market companies of banks, as is the case for us,” Slawomir Krupa, CEO of SOCGEN, told Slawomir Krupa. “The disorder can be controlled by everyone from a macro perspective.”

The first quarter of 2025 produced a standard performance in the markets of UBS and BNP Paribas. Trading revenues for the Swiss lender jumped by approximately one third to 2.5 billion dollars (2.3 billion euros) compared to the same period in the previous year, while the largest bank in France recorded its highest level ever of 2.8 billion euros in commercial returns during the quarter.

Deutsche Bank – which no longer has a commercial company for stocks – and Barclays reported a 17 percent increase and 21 percent, respectively, in fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading compared to the first quarter in 2024, outperformed all Wall Street lenders in the FICC Celsius during the period.

Socgen’s commercial performance was driven by its business, as revenues increased by more than five in the previous year to 1.06 billion euros, while the fixed income section witnessed a slight decrease.

After producing meager returns and shareholders ’payments for most of the past decade, European lenders have witnessed a shift in their wealth in recent years, while increasing interest rates in net benefits income – the difference between banks of interest from borrowers and the payment of depositors.

However, bank trading sections also benefited from shifts from market fluctuations, starting with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. This was followed by significant fluctuations in the market in early 2022 after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and central banks rapidly increased interest rates.

Before the last quarter, the first three months of 2022 held the crown as a quarter with the highest trade revenues for European banks since at least 2015, as the five banks produce 12.8 billion euros in joint revenues during that period. Credit Suisse was an important player in stock and Ficc trading in Europe before its demise in 2023.

Sergio Ermeti, CEO of UBS, said last week that the Swiss lender had witnessed a “significant increase in the activity of the customer and volatility” at the beginning of the second quarter after Trump announced a set of “mutual” tariffs on April 2, which led to the sale of the market.

He said: “On some days, trading volumes exceeded their climax in the Kofid era by about 30 percent,” describing the levels of activity as “very exceptional.”

“This preaches good for market revenues (the second quarter), a follow -up of strong stocks and produces FCCC (the first quarter),” said Andrew Compels, an analyst at Citigram.

Comberbes added: “(Ermotti) has confirmed that there is a degree of invested fatigue now and since then has returned to a more normalized circulation environment.”