Asia-focused bank Standard Chartered beat expectations yesterday with a 10 percent rise in half-year profit and unveiled a surprise £1 billion (US$1.7 billion) fundraising plan.
Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands said the share placing was “absolutely not” to build a warchest for a big acquisition, but was to give the bank firepower to take advantage of opportunities as Asian economies and customers recover.
“It’s about staying ahead of the game,” Sands said on a conference call. “Given that we see Asia having a shorter and shallower recession than other parts of the world, our clients are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel and we want to anticipate that and support them.”
He said the bank was in talks about small acquisitions in China and India, which would cost “low hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Standard Chartered is in talks to buy Royal Bank of Scotland’s assets there, which could cost about US$200 million, a person familiar with the matter has said.
Shares were expected to open down 3 percent to 5 percent, owing to the placing of 4 percent of the bank’s stock.
Standard Chartered reported a pretax profit for the six months of US$2.84 billion, up from US$2.59 billion a year ago and ahead of a forecast of US$2.49 billion from a Reuters poll of five analysts.
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