Despite a weak jobs economy and record personal debt, Canada’s biggest banks achieved a profit of $35 billion in 2015, a 5 per cent rise from a year earlier.
Income for the country’s largest lenders, the Royal Bank, TD Bank, Scotiabank, the Bank of Montreal, CIBC and National Bank, amount to about $96 million for every day of the fiscal year ended October 31.
They took in a combined revenue of $129.79 billion in 2015, a four per cent annual increase. The banks reserved $12.5 billion for bonuses.
Meanwhile, the financial giants eliminated 4,664 jobs in the fourth quarter, the biggest quarterly cut in six years. Perhaps that peculiar idea of bank prosperity should be called the trickle-out theory.