Bad debts worsen at China banks

摘要

As China's big banks post their weakest profit growth in a decade, measures aimed at easing their bad loan burdens are likely to be of only marginal help in the near term. With interest margins shrinking in the face of successive interest-rate cuts and non-performing loans at a 10-year high, China's Big Four state-owned banks reported near-flat or falling quarterly profits last week and cut their dividends. Industrial and commercial bank of china, the world's biggest bank in asset terms, reported no growth in fourth-quarter profit from a year earlier, while earnings at bank of China, agricultural bank of China and China construction bank were all either up or down just a percentage point or two.