Evening edition · Wednesday, 28 October 2026
Four banks brought receipts, and the market still read the Brazil line
Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, UBS and Santander all reported higher quarterly profits. The share prices went in different directions, which is how a market is supposed to work.
European banks had a crowded Wednesday, and the receipts were good. Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Santander all beat third-quarter profit forecasts, Reuters reports, and UBS sped up a share buyback after results broadly in line with expectations1. That pushes back against a fear that had cost bank shares about 10% over the past month: that the long profit boom from higher interest rates is fading1.
Bar chart of the year-on-year change in third-quarter 2026 profit reported on 28 October by four European banks: Santander underlying net profit up 19%, BNP Paribas up 14% to €3.46 billion, UBS net profit up 8% to $2.69 billion, and Deutsche Bank up 2%.
Source Company third-quarter results as reported by Reuters (via Investing.com and Euronext), 28 Oct 2026, retrieved 28 Oct 2026. Figures as reported by the named organisations; facts cited with attribution.
Data (CSV) · SVG · PNG
Latest values as a table
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Santander, underlying net profit | 19% |
| BNP Paribas, profit | 14% |
| UBS, net profit | 8% |
| Deutsche Bank, profit | 2% |
The numbers. BNP Paribas lifted profit 14% to €3.46 billion on a surge in equities trading and announced a €1.3 billion buyback1. Deutsche Bank’s profit rose 2%, against forecasts of a decline2. UBS earned $2.69 billion, up 8%, and plans to finish its $3 billion buyback by February1. Santander’s underlying profit rose 19%, helped by lenders it bought in Britain and the US1.
And the prices. Shares were mixed: Deutsche Bank was up 3.4% and Standard Chartered 3.7%, while UBS fell 1.1% and Santander 4.2%1. Santander’s problem was not its total but one line in it: weaker earnings and higher provisions in Brazil, where President Lula’s surprise re-election has rattled markets1. Spain’s bank-heavy index was the weakest in Europe, down 1.5%2. The pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.3% at 641.99 points by 11:15 CET2.
Why the dispersion is healthy. Banks are where interest rates turn into invoices: what borrowers pay, what savers earn, what a bond portfolio is worth. A market that sorts them by region and by business line, rather than buying or selling them all at once, is doing its dull job. “We have not seen the economies weaken as much as we would have expected them to weaken,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya of Swissquote, who remains constructive on the sector2.
Desk arithmetic: of the three banks in the chart whose share moves Reuters gave, the smallest profit rise (Deutsche Bank, +2%) came with the biggest share gain, and the largest (Santander, +19%) with the biggest fall. Expectations, not totals, set the price. Nothing here is investment advice.
What to watch
A profit is a fact about last quarter. A share price is an opinion about the next ten years. Do not confuse the two.
Sources
- European banks beat profit forecasts, Brazil overshadows Santander — Reuters via Investing.com, 28 Oct 2026.
- STOXX 600 inches lower as investors sift through earnings, higher oil prices — Reuters via Euronext, 28 Oct 2026, 11:35 CET.
Every figure in this piece traces to a source above or to the desk’s own arithmetic on those sources, marked as such. Quotations are short and attributed. Spot an error? Write to the desk; corrections are logged on the method page.
Commentary for information only. Not investment, legal, tax, medical or political advice. Not an offer or solicitation. Analysis may be incomplete or wrong. Charts show published public data, not a trading feed; binding numbers live with the institutions that publish them.