FGB’s CEO Andre Sayegh said that he expects the bank to maintain a net profit growth of 6% in 2015. In the last conference call management had said that it expects net profit to be flat or grow by low single-digit in 2016. We are more cautious and expect earnings to decline c8.0% in 2016 in light of growing sector-wide risks to credit quality. We believe it offers an attractive ROE of c19.0% with a solid underlying ROA of 2.4%. Its superior capitalisation and pre-provision profitability should support an above-sector-average pay-out of c75% in 2016e, in our view. (Reuters, Shabbir Malik, Murad Ansari)