Following the US Federal Reserve’s annual “stress tests” last week, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo said on Monday that they were increasing their capital payouts. After the Federal Reserve lifted emergency pandemic-era limitations on how much capital banks could return to investors last week, analysts and investors expected the country’s major lenders to begin issuing as much as $130 billion in dividends and stock buybacks as soon as next month. Morgan Stanley, on the other hand, surprised investors by announcing that its dividend would be doubled to 70 cents per share in the third quarter of 2021.
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