EUROPE’S most troubled big banks may at last be on the road to recovery. Not only is economic growth perking up; uncomfortable decisions, put off too long, are also being taken. In recent months UniCredit, Italy’s largest lender, has written down bad debt by €8.1bn ($8.7bn) and tapped shareholders for €13bn. Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest, has raised €8bn in equity and decided to keep a retail business it had hoped to sell. On April 27th it reported first-quarter net income of €575m, up from €236m a year earlier, although revenue fell.
Like Deutsche, Credit Suisse is freer to make plans after a recent settlement with American authorities over mis-selling mortgage-backed securities before the financial crisis. On April 26th Switzerland’s second-biggest bank reported first-quarter net income of SFr596m ($594m), far better than forecast, reversing a SFr302m loss a year before. Along with most of Wall Street, which published earnings earlier in the month, and Deutsche it benefited from a good quarter for fixed-income trading. It expects to wind up a unit in which it has dumped unwanted assets by the end of 2018, a year ahead of schedule.
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