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Banking

China Merchants Bank 2009 net profit falls

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-14 09:33

BEIJING: China Merchants Bank, the country's six largest lender, said late Tuesday both its net profit and revenues declined in 2009 from the previous year.

In a statement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Shanghai-based lender said its net profit fell by 13.48 percent to 18.24 billion yuan ($2.67 billion).

The full-year declining rate of profit was smaller than the 37.62 percent seen in the first half this year, attributable to narrowing interest income decline and rising non-interest income.

The lender saw its revenues down by 6.98 percent to 51.45 billion yuan, and shrinking interest income was to blame, according to the statement.

By the end of 2009, the bank had consumer savings of 1.61 trillion yuan, up 28.59 percent from the start of the year, and it extended a total of 1.19 trillion yuan in new loans or money advanced for customers, up 35.62 percent.

The lender registered a non-performing loan (NPL) rate of 0.82 percent with bad loans of 9.73 billion yuan in 2009. The NPL rate went down 0.29 percentage points from the start of the year.