Nine major leading brokerages' total net profit last year increased by over 44% year-on-year

Reporter Zhou Shangfei

Recently, nine leading broker-dealers, including CITIC Securities, Guotai Huarong, Huatai Securities, China Galaxy, CMB Securities, GF Securities, CICC, Shenwan Hongyuan, and CITIC Construction Investment, have successively released their 2025 annual reports. The data show that the nine leading broker-dealers combined recorded operating revenue of 338.597 billion yuan last year, up 33.1%; they combined achieved attributable net profit to common shareholders of 141.577 billion yuan, up 44.08%.

Jiang Haoran, Party Secretary and Chairman of Hengyin Financial Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with The Securities Daily: “Currently, leading broker-dealers focus on diversification, internationalization, and platformization. By strengthening their capabilities across the entire business chain and resource integration, they are moving toward ‘aircraft-carrier-level’ investment banking. In this process, leading broker-dealers not only set industry standards and lead innovation directions, but also shoulder the important responsibility of optimizing resource allocation and driving industry upgrading.”

High-Rate Growth in the Performance of Leading Broker-Dealers

In 2025, the A-share market’s trading activity remained robust and the direct financing function continued to strengthen, alongside an acceleration of industry consolidation. This ushered in a performance breakout period for leading broker-dealers.

In terms of capital strength, two securities firms have already emerged with total assets exceeding 2 trillion yuan. By the end of 2025, Guotai Junan and Haitong Securities’ merged entity, Guotai Haitong, delivered impressive results: in the first year after the merger, total assets reached 2.11 trillion yuan, highlighting the benefits of integration and synergy. CITIC Securities’ total assets reached 2.08 trillion yuan, up 21.7% from the beginning of 2025. Huatai Securities followed closely, with total assets of 1.08 trillion yuan.

In operating performance, in 2025, the operating revenue of all nine leading broker-dealers exceeded 20 billion yuan. CITIC Securities led with operating revenue of 74.854 billion yuan, up 28.79%; the operating revenues of Guotai Haitong, Huatai Securities, and GF Securities all exceeded 30 billion yuan, making the industry tier structure clear. For net profit, CITIC Securities’ attributable net profit to common shareholders reached 30.076 billion yuan, up 38.58%; Guotai Haitong’s attributable net profit to common shareholders was 27.809 billion yuan; and the attributable net profits to common shareholders of Huatai Securities, GF Securities, China Galaxy, and CMB Securities all exceeded 10 billion yuan.

Regarding growth rates, leading broker-dealers demonstrated strong momentum. Guotai Haitong’s year-on-year increase in operating revenue was the highest at 87.4%; GF Securities, CICC, and Shenwan Hongyuan’s year-on-year increases in operating revenue were 34.33%, 33.5%, and 30.29%, respectively. The highest year-on-year increase in attributable net profit was Guotai Haitong, at 113.52%; Shenwan Hongyuan followed closely, up 82.46%; and CICC and GF Securities increased by 71.93% and 42.18%, respectively, year on year.

An analyst in the non-banking financial sector at CICC Securities, Bo Xiaoxu, said: “The high-rate growth in the performance of leading broker-dealers is not only a reflection of their own operating capabilities, but also mirrors the overall industry recovery in 2025, becoming a snapshot of the industry’s positive outlook as a whole.”

Forging Hard Strength to Survive Through Cycles

At a crucial stage when reforms in the capital markets are deepening and industry structures are being reshaped, leading broker-dealers, leveraging synergy across full business chains as well as their advantages in capital and risk control, continue to forge hard strength that can carry them through cycles. They do this through business synergy, technological innovation, and internationalization strategies.

Relying on full-licensing advantages, leading broker-dealers promote deep integration among businesses such as investment banking, asset management, wealth management, and proprietary trading, building a one-stop integrated financial services system. In 2025, CITIC Securities deepened equity and bond financing services for technology enterprises. Over the whole year, the combined equity underwriting scale for the STAR Market, ChiNext, and the Beijing Stock Exchange totaled 54.7 billion yuan; the scale of STAR bond underwriting reached 235.4 billion yuan; it completed M&A transaction scales of 282.9 billion yuan in the Chinese market; the scale of global M&A transactions involving Chinese enterprises reached 77.2 billion US dollars; and all indicators ranked first in the market. Huatai Securities adheres to a mindset that emphasizes both industrial development and capital operations, providing high-quality enterprise customers in key industries with integrated domestic-and-overseas comprehensive financial services across the full business chain.

Worth noting is that M&A and restructuring have become an effective means for broker-dealers to achieve growth through external expansion. In 2025, CICC, while maintaining endogenous high-quality growth, also actively advanced absorbing mergers of Dongxing Securities and Cinda Securities, aiming to release the synergy effect of “1+2>3” through complementary strengths.

At the same time, leading broker-dealers benchmark international first-class investment banks and accelerate the implementation of their internationalization strategy. In 2025, CITIC Securities steadily advanced its internationalization development strategy, focusing on improving three core capabilities: “business capability, client market, and operational management.” CITIC Securities’ international business achieved operating revenue of 3.3 billion US dollars and net profit of 0.9 billion US dollars, increasing by 48% and 72% year on year, respectively, both reaching record highs. CICC, Huatai Securities, and others accelerated the establishment of overseas branches and business layouts to expand cross-border M&A and other businesses. In 2025, CICC’s overseas business revenue increased 58% year on year, accounting for nearly 30% of total revenue.

Looking ahead to a new journey for industry development, stakeholders across the market have placed great expectations on leading broker-dealers. As Huatai Securities’ CEO Zhou Yi stated in its annual report: under the macro background of the continuous downward shift of the interest-rate center of gravity and deep conversion of growth models, the underlying logic of financial services is also being rewritten—industrial depth, a global perspective, and a technological foundation are becoming the core capabilities for carrying through cycles.