Emerging markets bank Standard Chartered today blamed much of the woes of its rival banks on their massive bonus payment regimes as it reported a 31% rise in pre-tax profits.

Chairman Mervyn Davies said that in the wake of the year-long credit crunch it was time for all the banks to question their compensation packages.
He said: “The industry should not reward excessive risk- taking or reward failure.”

Chief executive Peter Sands said Standard Chartered was managed as “one bank”. He said: “The last 12 months have shown how dangerous it is to run a bank as collection of silos. This must be resisted. At its core, a bank is one business, with one balance sheet and one reputation.” He said people should be incentivised to “drive the growth of the bank as a whole while still being accountable for their own areas”.

He added that Standard Chartered was currently “attracting people with exceptional talent because they see the kind of results we produced today”.

Pre-tax profits were above analysts' forecasts at $2.59 billion (£1.31 billion) with earnings up 20% at 120.4 cents. The dividend rises 11% to 25.67 cents. Bad-debt charges rose, but nothing like rivals' billion-dollar writedowns, with the total charge up from £361 million to £465 million. Sands echoed some of rival HSBC's views that the economies of Asia, Africa and the Middle East are bound to show slower rates of growth for the rest of this year and next. But he qualified this, saying: “We don't expect a major interruption to growth in our markets but we do see some slowdown.

“However, rates of growth will still be 6% in the Emirates, more than 7% in India and around 9% in China and Nigeria next year. These are still very high rates of growth by European or US standards. Our markets have not uncoupled but neither are they in lockstep.”

Brokers said that the figures were good but contained few surprises, with the shares rising 11p to 839p.