published Sep 5th 2016, 6:01 pm, by Agnieszka de Sousa

(Bloomberg) —
It’s looking like another bad year for the biggest banks when it comes to commodities.

Revenue from raw materials at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 10 other top banks slid 25 percent in the first half to $2.2 billion from a year earlier, according to analytics firm Coalition Development Ltd. That was the lowest first-half amount in at least half a decade amid a “lackluster” performance across energy and industrial metals, the company said in a report on Tuesday.

Institutions have scaled down or abandoned their commodities businesses over the past few years amid more regulatory scrutiny and reduced investment by their hedge-fund clients and other large traders. While commodities have recovered since the start of the year, banks are still under pressure to cut their exposure to energy with oil trading at half the price it was two years ago, according to George Kuznetsov, head of research at London-based Coalition.

“We are comparing a relatively strong first-half last year in oil,” Kuznetsov said by phone. “This year, there are limits these guys have. The amount of business they can take has to be significantly smaller. Their risk levels have been reduced quite substantially across the board.”

Annual Declines

Banks’ commodities income slumped 40 percent in the first quarter. That helped drag down first-half revenue across fixed income, commodities and currencies by 11 percent to $38.2 billion, Coalition said. The drop was tempered by earnings in precious metals that were up “slightly” due to increased client demand, Coalition said.

Combined revenue from raw materials slid 18 percent to $4.6 billion last year, the lowest in more than a decade, and down about two-thirds from the banks’ moneymaking peak in 2008.

Coalition tracks commodities activities including power and gas, oil, metals, coal and agriculture. Other banks included in Coalition’s research are Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc., Societe Generale SA, Credit Suisse Group AG, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, UBS Group AG and HSBC Bank Plc.

To contact the reporter on this story: Agnieszka de Sousa in London at atroszkiewic@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net Nicholas Larkin

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