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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (49002)	4/24/2004 12:59:43 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Bank of China reports 50% surge BEIJING - Bank of China, the country's largest foreign exchange bank, said on Thursday that its international settlement business grew more than 50 percent in the first quarter of 2004. The bank said it handled US$79.7 billion (660 billion yuan) of international settlement business during the January-March period, an increase of $26.7 billion or 50.31 percent from a year earlier. In March alone, the bank handled $29.7 billion worth of such business, a record in a single month. During the three months, the bank also conducted trade-related financing business worth $4.1 billion, an increase of 87.63 percent. The fast growth in the two businesses helped bring in more income for the Bank of China. The bank earned $1.5 billion from the two businesses during the first quarter, an increase of 39.78 percent. Spokesman Wang Zhaowen said the two businesses were important segments of the bank's plans to develop in the coming years. "Development of non-interest business is vital for increasing the competitiveness of Bank of China," he said. The bank said earlier it earned 17.4 billion yuan in operating profit during the first quarter, a year-on-year increase of 28 percent compared with the same period last year. By the end of March, the bank's non-performing credit ratio was 14.84 percent, a drop of 1.44 percentage points.