Reduced provisions for loan losses in 1988 boosted bank profits in the Fifth District and nationwide. Profit ratios also may have been influenced somewhat by subsidiary banks’ payment of management fees to their holding companies.

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Recent years have seen bank loan losses exceeded only by those of the Great Depression. This experience, along with tax and regulatory changes, has triggered changes in the reserve account through which banks provide for such losses.

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Profits at Fifth District commercial banks declined significantly during 1987. But the Fifth District decline pales in comparison with the dramatic fall in profitability for banks in the rest of the nation. Much of the decline in both Fifth District banks and throughout the nation was due to...