More on Banks fees and profits .

For what its worth, I came across the following and decided to share it with my readers.

“Banks will have to accept the new normal of low growth, low return on equity,” said Yoo Sang Ho, a Seoul-based banking analyst at HI Investment & Securities Co. “They have to forget what they saw in the mid-2000s.”

Over the past five years, Korean economic growth slowed to 2.9 percent from an average 5.8 percent in the nine years through 2008, according to the IMF, as household debt swelled. At the same time, commercial banks saw their ROE slump to about 7.4 percent last year from 20.3 percent in 2005, according to data from the nation’s Financial Supervisory Service.

“Because of the government’s view, on the retail side you have to conduct your business in a way that’s good for clients which isn’t necessarily profit maximizing,” said Iain Clacher, an associate professor in accounting and finance at Leeds University Business School, who’s published research on the economic development since the Korean war in the 1950s. “It’s not a glamorous thing but it can be stable.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-22/citigroup-to-standard-chartered-hurt-by-korean-debt-curbs.html