Among all of the brokerage business lines, the core brokerage business (trading on behalf of firm's clients) contributed almost a half of total net income, 104.9 billion RMB. Underwriting revenue almost doubled to 24 billion RMB, while financial advisory and investment consulting services earned 6.9 and 2.2 billion RMB for the firms, respectively, with a relatively slow growth in both services. On the other hand, asset management and securities investment had a strong growth, 77% and 132%. The impressive performance in securities investment was primarily a result of the stock market rally in 4Q2014.
The largest jump was in margin lending business, 184% to RMB 446.2 billion, the business line brought 17% of all brokerages’ revenue. We talk about the background on and projections for the margin lending in this commentary.
Overall revenue was up 38% for the year which led to net profit was 96.5 billion for the industry, with almost 100% of companies profitable, up from 90.43% in 2013.
