China Development revises this year's pretax profit to loss

China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控), the nation's fourth-largest financial holding company, lowered its pretax profit forecast for this year to a NT$13.4 billion loss (US$390 million), blaming bad loans.

The bank plans to set aside NT$16.9 billion to write off bad loans in the second half of this year, it said in a statement.

China Development in January forecast a pretax profit of NT$10.08 billion for the year.

The revision comes one month after China Development named Diana Chen (陳敏薰)to replace Liu Tai-ying (劉泰英), who quit as chairman after being charged with misuse of funds.

"New leadership, new policy," said company spokeswoman Grace Fang. "We want to be more transparent."

Liu came under pressure from the Ministry of Finance to quit after prosecutors filed a 400-page indictment alleging he embezzled funds, received kickbacks and misused money during his time as manager of the KMT's assets.