National Bank of Egypt triples net income
Cairo, October 9, 2009
National Bank of Egypt (NBE), the country's largest bank by assets, more than tripled its net income in the year to end-June by expanding its deposit base and cleaning up its loan portfolio, it said in a statement.
The bank also benefited from the sale of a number of investments, its chairman Tarek Amer had told Reuters in an interview in July.
Net income at the state-owned bank surged to 1.19 billion Egyptian pounds ($217 million) in the 2008/09 fiscal year from 385 million pounds the year before despite an inhospitable banking climate, it said in a statement.
The bank said it is targeting net profit of 1.4 billion pounds in the current fiscal year that ends next June.
"The global financial crisis continued to have a negative affect on all world economies during the 2008/09 financial year," the statement said. Despite this, "the bank was able to achieve the highest growth among banks in Egypt and in the region".
NBE was the last of Egypt's four main state-owned banks to bring in managers from the private sector, in a reform process that began with Banque du Caire in 2000. The banks had been lumbering under four decades of state bureaucracy.
Amer brought in 140 new senior managers and 1,500 junior managers after he took up his position in April 2008.
Deposits jumped 26 percent in the fiscal year to 218.9 billion pounds, boosting the bank's share of total bank deposits in Egypt to 27 percent from 23.2 percent the year before.
NBE said it aims to increase its deposits to 235 billion by June 2010, or 28 percent of total bank deposits in Egypt.
The bank also entirely covered its provisions for non-performing loans and collected debts worth 2.3 billion pounds in settlements with 1,320 borrowers during the fiscal year.
Loans by the bank edged up to 94.4 billion pounds from 94.0 billion. The bank aims to increase lending 13 percent by June 30, 2010, to 106.5 billion pounds, the statement said.
The bank is increasing its capital by $400 million through a long-term secured loan that will be converted to equity by June.-Reuters
