Fee gains and expense controls helped a slew of big banks beat their consensus earnings estimates for the first quarter.
Among those reporting Monday, NationsBank Corp. cited cost management and fee-income growth for a 38% earnings jump, to $709 million.
First Chicago NBD Corp. also cited cost controls for a 12% increase, to $380 million.
Norwest Corp. of Minneapolis said profits rose 19% to $322 million, while Bank of New York Co. recorded a 9% improvement, to $265 million.
National City Corp. of Cleveland, reported an 11% gain to $196 million.
"The mix of earnings shows the shift in favor of high-return, high-value businesses," said Judah S. Kraushaar, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. "Banks are getting away from being just plain vanilla."
At $239 billion-asset NationsBank, earnings per share totaled 94 cents, beat- ing the analysts' consensus by 2 cents.
Chairman Hugh L. McColl Jr. said the quarter was marked by a focus on produc- tivity initiatives as well as further progress in the integration of …
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