Mizuho & Commerzbank: the best banks to work for now?
If you're looking for a stable platform from which to sell your wares in the final weeks of 2023 and going into 2024, two unlikely contenders have emerged from the recent set of banking results: Mizuho and Commerzbank.
While rivals flounder, the Japanese and German bank are doing unusually well.
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Mizuho reported its second quarter results for 2023 today (covering the period to September 30th) and they look pretty fine. Gross profits from the sales and trading and banking business are up a combined 33% year-on-year. Mizuho declares that its 'global CIB' [corporate and investment bank] model is becoming a "strength" and that its primary and secondary businesses are complementing each other.
Commerzbank reported its own quarterly results last week. The German bank said its capital markets business was "strong" in the third quarter. Commerzbank doesn't directly disclose trading revenues, but commissions earned from corporate clients are roughly stable year-on-year.
The best news concerning Commerzbank is that bonuses appear to be up. Last week's Commerz results documents reiterate several times that 'profit-related variable remuneration' is rising. Having increased overseas headcount by 680 people to 12,799 in the past year, Commerzbank says it would now like to expand its digital offering for FX, open its trading platform to other asset classes and grow its bonds business.
Mizuho is also busy hiring. The Japanese bank said in July that it planned to hire 100 people for its US investment bank by March 2024.
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