Analyzing Financial Risk and Profitability in the UAE Banking Sector

Abstract

The paper examines four main sources of financial risk exposure for four banks in the United Arab Emirates during the years 2003 to 2009. It begins by measuring stability levels for different types of financial risks using the coefficient of variation measure. The research then proceeds to investigate the nature of the relationship between financial risk and the actual reported financial performance of each company, namely the return on equity and return on assets. The findings show that all four sources of financial risk showed significant stability while both profitability indicators exhibited significant instability over the same period. Moreover, performance on the return on assets indicator was strongly and positively tied to a company’s return on equity indicator across the four banks but exhibited little or no interconnection with the four types of risks that banks are commonly exposed.