Everbright Bank pursues IPO in Hong Kong

China's State-run Everbright Bank, a mid-sized lender whose proprietary trading arm was suspended from trading two weeks ago, is in the process to applying for an IPO of H-shares, the company's mid-term report said on Monday.

The company is promoting the H-share listing in order to further strengthen capital, the report said. China's Ministry of Finance and the China Banking Regulatory Commission have approved the motion.

The bank has formally submitted its application to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Everbright Securities Co was suspended recently after it made a trading error that sparked a historic buying frenzy in the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Net profits at the bank rose 15.46 percent in the first half of 2013 to 14.92 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), according to its report.

The bank's business revenues hit 33.78 billion yuan in the first six months, up 10.83 percent year-on-year, boosted by rising net interest income and growing service fees and commission.

Service fees and commission income rose 48.83 percent at the end of June from a year earlier to 7.4 billion yuan. Net interest income rose 2.95 percent to 26.05 billion yuan per share in the first half of the year.

Volume of non-performing loans reached 8.84 billion yuan, and its non-performing loan ratio was 0.8 percent at the end of June, up 0.06 percentage points from the end of 2012.

Geographically, 46.24 percent of its non-performing loans went to the Yangtze River Delta Region.