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Europe's biggest bank, HSBC, today played down talk of an imminent recovery in the global economy.
The bank, whose operations stretch from Shanghai to Los Angeles and all points between, said that its first-quarter profits before one-off gains were lower than in the first quarter of last year but higher than the final quarter.
Mike Geoghegan, chief executive, said: "There may be some spring bounce, but the reality is that people are concerned about employment and are not yet sure if they want to make financial commitments. The recession has some time to go."
Chairman Stephen Green said: "The future macro-economic environment remains highly uncertain and signals from the broader economy are very mixed.
"Economic activity remains unusually depressed in spite of interest rates at historically low levels globally.
"However, US consumer spending has held up well and business sentiment has improved in recent months.
"There are also signs that financial markets may be regaining some of their appetite for risk."
HSBC is still paying the price of its ill-fated foray into the American subprime mortgage market in 2003.
However, bad-debt writedowns on the business at $3.95 billion (£2.6 billion) were almost $1 billion lower than many analysts had expected.
Geoghegan cautioned against making any assumptions that matters were improving on the basis of a single quarter.
He said: "In the US, we have been pleasantly surprised in regard to the first quarter, but we don't think that's a trend and need to look at it for the next four quarters."
He also said there were distinct signs that consumers in America had used former President George Bush's final fiscal stimulus to pay off their debts rather than go on a spending spree.
In the UK bad debts rose and will continue to rise at on both business and personal loans, said Geoghegan.
HSBC shares which had almost doubled in value in the last two months today fell 8¼p to 569¼p.
