Investment bank ROEs have been in steady decline since 2009, falling to 7.8% in 2014. The combination of pressure from low cost financial products like ETFs, the costs of regulatory compliance, and competition from private equity and hedge funds have simply made the business less profitable than it once was and a new Ernst & Young report argues that even getting back to 10% ROE will be impossible without radical change.
“The days of leverage-inflated, 20%-plus returns on equity are long gone. The once-lofty ambitions of management teams to deliver ROEs in excess of 15% have been moderated considerably. In some instances, banks are now targeting a 10% ROE — barely above their cost of equity,” says the EY report...
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