NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks have not reaped the full benefit of U.S. tax cuts, Wall Street executives said on Friday after a string of quarterly results, with expected business growth and higher consumer spending yet to materialize.
Analysts and investors are still trying to work out the longer-term effects of the tax rewrite signed into law in December, which slashed the federal corporate rate.
Asked what impact Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) is seeing from the new tax law, the bank’s finance chief, John Shrewsberry, said “not much yet.”
Bank executives said last quarter that tax cuts and changes in capital expense deductions should stoke broad economic growth, fueling expectations of higher lending and capital markets activity.
“It has not been a big mover of our business or what you can see in the real economy,” Shrewsberry said, though he expects that to change later this year.
There has been some wage growth but consumer spending has not picked up accordingly, he said. Wells Fargo has not had any unusual uptick in loan demand or meaningful changes to how products and services are priced, he added.
“As much as we’re all eager to see the benefits ... I think we have to recognize that tax reform is still in the early phases,” JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake said on a media conference call after the bank reported first-quarter results.
She told reporters earlier that JPMorgan expects to see benefits, but “with a lag.”
“While client sentiment is high in the wake of corporate tax reform and we remain hopeful that
