Taiwan Cooperative Bank planning to auction off bad debt

Taiwan Cooperative Bank (合作金庫銀行), the nation's second-largest lender by assets, hopes to reduce its bad-debt ratio through the auction of NT$30 billion (US$906.6 million) in bad loans after taking over a weaker rival, the Farmers Bank of China (農民銀行), last May.

The acquisition of Farmers Bank for about NT$16 billion in stock created a bank with combined assets of NT$2.6 trillion.

Downward trend

"We think the non-performing loan ratio will drop to 2.2 percent [from the current 2.6 percent] after selling the batch of bad assets by year's end," Taiwan Cooperative spokesman Chen An-hsiung (陳安雄) said on the sidelines of a ceremony marking the bank's 60th anniversary yesterday.

Taiwan Cooperative had auctioned off NT$40.2 billion in bad loans prior to the planned sale.

The lender expects to create earnings of NT$8.2 billion this year, up from NT$2.63 billion last year.

Capital adequacy

For the first eight months of this year, the bank generated earnings of NT$5.59 billion, or NT$1.56 per share.

Taiwan Cooperative plans to raise NT$4.4 billion to boost its capital adequacy ratio to 10.2 percent from 9.2 percent, Chen said.

The target is to raise the ratio to 12 percent, which would require fundraising of NT$15 billion, he added.

The bank is slated to hold an ad hoc shareholders meeting to raise the level of the bank's capitalization to NT$60 billion from the current NT$45 billion, he added.