“Overthinking any one driver or conclusion might be challenging,” Lake told analysts. “As we look at the economy, we don’t see it slowing down. It seems to be continuing to grow pretty solidly.”
Mark Doctoroff, global co-head of Financial Institutions Group at MUFG, also believed that bank stocks have been viewed in a bad light since the financial crisis.
“But we’re in a really good environment,” Doctoroff said. “The consumer is healthy, corporate credit is healthy, there are little to no credit losses. There has been talk about slow loan growth, but that’s not the banks’ fault. It’s the evolution of the market that a lot of nonbank lenders are now taking share, from BDCs to private-equity to even asset managers. Overall, there is loan growth, it’s just not only at banks.”
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