SC Bank Korea's Q1 net jumps 23 pct

SEOUL, May 15 (Yonhap) -- Standard Chartered Bank Korea said Friday its first-quarter net profit soared more than 23 percent from a year ago on solid revenue.

Net income stood at 93.8 billion won (US$76.3 million) in the January-March period, up 23.4 percent from the year earlier, said the local unit of British banking giant Standard Chartered Bank.

The lender said overall revenue showed a marked upturn thanks to a rise in assets and greater fee income. Also responsible was a slight gain in costs on efforts to trim costs and boost productivity.

The bank's return on equity, a key measure of profitability, stood at 8.32 percent in the first quarter, up 1.64 percentage points from a year earlier.

The lender's ratio of nonperforming loans reached 0.40 percent as of the end of March, with its loan delinquency rate coming to 0.22 percent.

Standard Chartered Bank Korea said its capital adequacy ratio, a key barometer of financial health, reached 15.41 percent as of end-March.

The ratio measures the share 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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