Wall Street’s major firms saw their capital markets revenues decline in the second quarter, but the Canadian banks reported solid results from those businesses, Fitch Ratings says in a new report.

The rating agency reports that the four Canadian banks that report capital markets segments — Bank of Montreal, CIBC, Royal Bank of Canada, and Bank of Nova Scotia — reported collective capital market segment revenues of $4.4 billion, which was up 14.4% over the same period in 2013. And, it notes that each of the Canadian banks reported year-over-year growth.

By comparison, the large U.S. firms (including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) saw combined capital market segment revenue drop 5.9% year-over-year, to US$28.7 billion.

The Canadian banks’ results benefited from a revenue mix with less exposure than the U.S. firms to the fixed income currencies and commodities (FICC) business, which is shrinking, Fitch suggests. And, it notes that they also benefited from improvements in advisory revenues.

RBC, which is the bank that has made the most pronounced expansion effort in global capital markets, had the strongest gain, with revenues up 20% in its overall capital markets segment. This was driven by a 31% advance across its FICC, equities and repo businesses. The FICC component represents just 28% of total capital market revenues for RBC, Fitch notes, whereas the large U.S. firms are more exposed to this segment.

And, the large U.S. firms are more exposed to capital markets overall. For example, Fitch says that RBC’s capital markets revenues were 23% of overall revenue for the second quarter; and that this exposure ranges from between 17% at Scotia to 24% at BMO. For the large U.S. firms, the range is from 25% to over two-thirds of total revenues.

One potential issue Fitch flags for the banks is the prospect of rising credit risk. It notes that credit risk in capital market activities can grow as activity increases, especially in trading. And, it says that lending activities are also becoming a larger component of the Canadian banks’ capital markets revenues, “potentially further increasing credit risk in these segments over time. As such, growth in capital markets revenues relative to overall revenues has the potential to constrain ratings.”