Six Pakistani banks in Asia Pacific’s top 15: S&P Global report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani banks dominated a ranking of Asia-Pacific lenders with six making their way into the top 15, the S&P Global Intelligence shared the latest report on Wednesday.

Among the top 10, Four Pakistan-based banks made the top 10 including the United Bank Ltd (UBL), National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), Bank Alfalah Ltd (BAFL), and Bank of Punjab (BoP).

According to the S&P Global Market Intelligence data, United Bank has a market capitalization of $1.68 billion and recorded a total stock return of 159.7% to place second in a ranking of the region’s best-performing bank stocks.

It trailed behind Indonesia’s PT Bank Artha Graha Internasional Tbk, which has a market cap of $270 million and made total returns of 193.2% in the year, the data shows.

National Bank of Pakistan also made it to the list with a return of 108.4 per cent, while Bank Alfalah Ltd with 107.1 per cent return, and Bank of Punjab (BoP) with98.4 per cent made to the list of best-performing banks.

Furthermore, the report showed that Allied Bank Ltd (ABL) and Habib Metropolitan Bank Ltd were placed in the list of top 15 banks with a return of 94.5 per cent and 93.2 per cent, respectively.

“Several banks based in the region’s developing economies performed better on the metric of total returns than those in traditional powerhouse nations,” the S&P Global report read.

According to the report, Japan was the only country with multiple lenders in the top 10 best performers, while the remaining spots were taken by one bank each from Indonesia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

The ranking looked at Asia-Pacific lenders with market caps of more than $100 million as of Dec. 31. Small-cap banks dominated the list, according to the data, with only six of the 15 best-performing lenders exceeding a market cap of $1 billion.

The report added that many Pakistan-based lenders recovered from an earlier share price slump that came amid the nation’s weakening economy and surging inflation, among other factors.

“Pakistan’s economy recovered in the second half of 2024, helped by a funding program by the International Monetary Fund,” it read.

Apart from that, the S&P Global report revealed the worst-performing Asia-Pacific bank stocks in 2024, which showed most of the banks from China and India.

“Relatively slow economic growth in China and India weighed on the share prices of banks in Asia-Pacific’s two major growth engines,” the report mentioned.

“No lenders in mainland China or India made the top 15 best-performers list.”

Mainland China’s Jilin Jiutai Rural Commercial Bank Corp. Ltd. had the worst performance by total returns in 2024, dropping 52.9%, according to Market Intelligence data.

Following it on the worst-performers list were Indonesia’s PT Bank Neo Commerce Tbk, which had a 50% fall, and PT Allo Bank Indonesia Tbk, with a 45.7% decline.