2010-08-19 14:18

Bank of Communications, China's fifth largest lender, said Wednesday that its net profit for the first half of the year rose 30.08 percent from one year earlier to 20.36 billion yuan ($2.99 billion).

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The bank attributed the increase to improvements in lending profitability and business expansion, which boosted business fee revenues.

Total assets of the bank reached 3.71 trillion yuan at the end of June, an increase of 12.09 percent from the beginning of the year, it said in a statement delivered to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

At the end of June, the bank's capital adequacy ratio, an important gauge to measure financial strength at a bank, stood at 12.17 percent, 0.17 percentage points higher than at the start of the year. Further, its non-performing loan ratio was 1.22 percent, compared with a ratio of 1.36 percent at the end of last year, it said.

The share price of the bank edged down 0.63 percent to 6.28 yuan on the Shanghai bourse Wednesday. It released the statement after the close of trade.