SC Bank Korea's net gains 2.5 pct in H1

SEOUL, Aug. 14 (Yonhap) -- Standard Chartered Bank Korea said Wednesday its consolidated net profit climbed 2.5 percent on-year to 150.3 billion won (US$124 million) in the first half of the year.

Its operating profit came to 198.7 billion won in the January-June period, up 8.3 percent from a year ago.

The lender, owned by British banking giant Standard Chartered, said overall revenue went up on a steady rise in interest income and a one-off profit from bad-loan sales.

The bank's return on equity, a key measure of profitability, stood at 6.65 percent in the first half, up 0.47 percentage point from a year earlier.

The lender's ratio of nonperforming loans reached 0.56 percent as of the end of June, up 0.06 percentage point from a year ago, with its loan delinquency rate dropping 0.04 percentage point to 0.26 percent.

Standard Chartered Bank Korea, formerly SC First Bank, said its capital adequacy ratio, a key barometer of financial health, amounted to 15.61 percent as of end-June.

The ratio measures the proportion of a bank's total capital to its risk-weighted assets. The Bank for International Settlements, an international organization of central banks based in Basel, Switzerland, advises lenders to maintain a ratio of 8 percent or higher.

In 2005, the British financial group took over the financially troubled First Bank of Korea.
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