HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) -Standard Chartered ( SCBFF ) reported on Thursday a higher-than-expected 26% jump in first-half pretax profit, as a strong performance in the wealth, markets and global banking businesses boosted revenue at the lender.

Emerging markets-focused StanChart also announced a further $1.3 billion share buyback that it said would start imminently.

The London-headquartered lender said the reported pretax profit for the first six months of this year hit $4.38 billion. That compared with $3.49 billion a year earlier and the $3.83 billion average of 15 analyst estimates compiled by the bank.

Despite the strong results, StanChart kept its key performance targets largely unchanged, saying the global economy could suffer from the broader fallout of U.S. President Donald Trump's trade wars.

The bank, which earns most of its revenue in Asia and Africa, slightly raised its guidance for income this year, saying it now expected growth to be at the bottom of a 5%-7% range rather than below it.

StanChart's trading business, its second-biggest revenue driver, registered a 28% rise in operating income to $2.4 billion, propelled by buoyant client trading amid rising market volatility following the U.S.-initiated trade talks.

Wealth management income shot up by 24% as efforts to boost fee revenue paid off with inflows and the number of new accounts rising due to demand for wealth advice amid the market volatility.

The bank has said it will target $200 billion in new assets and double-digit growth in income from its wealth business over the next five years, as part of a wider strategy to shift to higher fee-earning businesses.

It said 135,000 new affluent clients joined the bank in the first half of 2025, bringing in $28 billion of net new money.

The lender also appeared to dodge the multi-billion dollar China-related write-downs which blighted rival HSBC's results announced on Wednesday, with StanChart reporting an impairment charge for the first half of $336 million, mainly from its wealth and retail banking unit.

The bank said its exposure to Hong Kong's troubled commercial real estate sector was $2.1 billion, less than 0.5% of its total book, with provisions rising $34 million in the second quarter of the year to $116 million.

The lender, however, warned that cash constraints on borrowers could lead to more impairments.

(Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong and Lawrence White in London; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)