China's Postal Savings Bank profit up 11% ahead of IPO

Bloomberg reports Postal Savings Bank of China Co., the lender preparing for a share offer that may raise $8 billion, had an 11% increase in first-quarter profit as it pared back provisions for bad loans.  Net income was 12.5 billion yuan ($1.9 billion) in the three months to March 31, prelisting documents filed to Hong Kong’s stock exchange showed. Earnings for 2015 rose 7% to 34.9 billion yuan. The lender’s nonperforming loan ratio stood at 0.81% as of March 31 – or less than half the official figure for the industry as a whole. The bank’s provisions for bad loans more than halved in the first quarter from a year earlier.