For the five largest banking groups, which have raised € billion on the equity market since 2011, the average core tier 1 capital ratio has risen from 5.7 to 10.8 per cent; the ratio stands at 8.8 per cent for the other banking groups and at 13.8 per cent for the smaller banks, mostly mutual banks.
Three- to five-year earnings forecasts for each of the S&P 500 corporations, compiled from projections of securities analysts by I/B/E/S, averaged almost 12 percent per year between 1985 and 2001. Actual earnings growth over that period averaged about 7 percent. Perhaps the last sixteen years, for which systematic data have been available, are an historical aberration.