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Banks and other financial service providers have not had it easy over the past ten years.
Regardless of whether it is about the reputation of the population, their battered balance sheets or their tattered share prices.
But at least as far as the last point is concerned, something is currently changing.
Since the beginning of the year, financial stocks have gained more than ten percent.
The MSCI ACWI index as a whole, which comprises the 3,000 largest companies from 50 industrialized and emerging countries, rose only 1.2 percent.
The IT industry, which has been celebrated for years, has even lost, as has the pharmaceutical sector.
This has a lot to do with the current mood in the financial market, where investors are selling off the very stocks that have always promised the greatest growth so far.
However, this trend reversal also corrects some things.
Because the financial sector is still one of the largest and most profitable industries - even if in Germany it is mostly the misery of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank that distracts from it.
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None of the eleven sectors of the world index have a higher turnover: the financial service providers come to just under ten trillion dollars.
This puts them well ahead of the producers of durable consumer goods and ahead of traditional industrial companies in second and third place.
The IT companies only have a third.
When it comes to the number of employees, the financial companies are well ahead with 18.3 million employees, only surpassed by producers of durable consumer goods, where more than 20 million people work.
There are almost twelve million at IT companies.
Source: WORLD infographic
The employees ultimately generate the company's profits, and this is where the financial industry is unbeatable.
"When it comes to net profit, the financial sector takes the place in the sun," says Sven Lehmann, fund manager at asset manager HQ Trust.
"The financial giants achieved almost 40 percent of the profit from all sectors combined."
Source: WORLD infographic
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And even if you look at earnings per employee, the industry leads at $ 61,000.
This is followed by communications service providers with $ 54,000 and the real estate industry with $ 45,900.
Once again, IT companies rank well behind, at $ 34,100.
The IT industry only marginally outperforms financial service providers in one discipline, and that is when it comes to the margin.
IT companies reap around 11.7 percent of sales as net profit, while the figure for financial companies is 11.3 percent.
But does this minimal difference justify the gigantic gap that has opened up between the share prices of the two industries in recent years?
Source: WORLD infographic
While IT stocks have more than tripled in five years, financial service providers only gain 48 percent.
As a result, IT companies now have a weighting of around 22 percent in the MSCI ACWI Index - well above their share of sales, employees and profits.
The financial sector only brings it to 13.2 percent.
That was different until the financial crisis, when financial stocks had a similarly dominant position on the stock market as IT companies do today.
But that also shows that times can change.
And maybe it's that time again now.
Source: WORLD infographic