SEC approves hike in China Bank capital

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved China Banking Corp.’s plan to raise its authorized capital stock to P10 billion from P5 billion.

The capital increase is intended to cover the bank’s stock dividend of 35 percent.

Chinabank vice president and corporate information officer Alex Escucha said the capital hike is meant to rationalize the bank’s capital structure as its capital has actually reached P20 billion (including surplus capital).

Escucha said the capital hike and dividend declaration allows the bank to lock-in some of the excess capital for use by the bank.

Chinabank reported a 19 percent growth in its first half net income this year to P1.61 billion from only P1.35 billion in the same period in 2004.

Total revenues rose 27.7 percent to P6.4 billion with net interest revenues growing 19.6 percent to P2.83 billion. Fee-based revenues improved 44.7 percent to P1.49 billion for the semester.

Chinabank president Peter Dee said their performance "exceeded our expectations, as we were just aiming to maintain the already record-level gains of the previous three years."

The income improvement was attributed to securities trading gains, growth in loans volume, and strong growth in lowcost deposit base which improved margins and sustained contributions from trust operations.