Industrial & Commercial Bank of China saw operating profit rise in 2005 while the number of bad loans decreased, following a government bailout last year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country’s largest lender by assets reported its unaudited 2005 operating profit before bad-loan provisions at US$11.2 billion, up 21% from 2004. After setting aside provisions, ICBC said it would register an operating profit of US$3.47 billion for 2005. The government injected US$15 billion into ICBC from its foreign-exchange reserves in 2005 and stripped US$87 billion of bad assets off the bank’s books at face value, reducing the banks nonperforming-loan ratio from 18.99% to 4.43%.
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