Manulife Financial Corp. and Sun Life Financial Inc. each posted a 10 per cent gain in underlying quarterly earnings as improving equity markets helped their asset-management divisions, and Sun Life’s fourth-quarter profit beat analysts’ expectations. Even with its earnings increase, Manulife fell short of estimates, partly hurt by slowing growth in Asia.
“We saw good growth across asset management in the U.S. and Canada,” Chief Financial Officer Kevin Strain said in an interview, adding the company’s alternative assets management business “hit a high.” Asia GrowthBoth Manulife and Sun Life saw lower profit growth in Asia, which has been an important earnings driver. The 6.7 per cent increase in Manulife’s Asian operations was the slowest in at least two years, with Chief Executive Officer Roy Gori citing the “headwinds” of the protests in Hong Kong and new rules in Japan around corporate-owned life insurance products, which hurt sales.
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