Bank of East Asia profits rise as wealth business offsets bad property loans in Hong Kong
Advertisement
The bank recorded HK$2.41 billion (US$309 million) in net profit for the six months to June, or 86 HK cents per share, compared with HK$2.11 billion a year earlier, according to a stock exchange filing on Thursday. Analysts had expected 11 per cent profit growth.
The bank will pay an interim dividend of 39 HK cents per share, 25.8 per cent higher than a year earlier.
A 16 per cent increase in fee income from the sale of insurance, wealth-management products and structured products drove the growth, bringing in HK$1.65 billion, the bank reported.
This was offset by an increase in bad debt provisions for commercial property loans, as Hong Kong's non-performing-loan ratio in the sector rose to 7.5 per cent in June from 6 per cent in December, the bank said. In addition, 10 per cent of the sector's outstanding loans were classified as risky, it added.
Advertisement
'We are very cautious about the commercial real estate loans made in Hong Kong, and cannot rule out a continuing rise in the non-performing loan ratio,' BEA's co-CEO Adrian Li Man-kiu said in a results briefing.
Amid weak demand for office and retail space, HSBC, Hang Seng Bank and Standard Chartered also revealed higher provisions for commercial-property loans in their first-half results.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
22 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Tech war: DeepSeek hints China close to unveiling home-grown ‘next generation' AI chips
Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek said that China will soon have home-grown 'next generation' chips for AI stacking, fanning speculation over breakthroughs China may have achieved. In a one-line note on its official WeChat account explaining the 'UE8M0 FP8 scale' of its newly released model V3.1, the Hangzhou-based firm said that the model was particularly designed 'for the home-grown chips to be released soon'. It did not specify the vendor of these chips or whether their use would be in the training of AI models or inferencing. In a technical paper explaining V3.1, which integrates reasoning and non-reasoning modes into one model, DeepSeek said the model was trained 'using the UE8M0 FP8 scale data format to ensure compatibility with microscaling data formats'. The disclosure hints that China has made key progress in building a self-sufficient AI stack consisting of domestic technologies, a development that could help the country shrug off US chip export restrictions. FP8, or floating-point 8 is an 8-bit data format that reduces precision to speed up AI training and inference by using less memory and bandwidth. UE8M0, a format with 8 bits for exponent and 0 bits for mantissa, could further increase training efficiency and in turn reduce hardware requirements, as it could cut memory use by up to 75 per cent. DeepSeek's use of these formats, if combined with China's domestic chips, could translate to a new breakthrough in hardware-software coordination. The revelation marks a bold claim from the company, which has been relatively quiet since it shocked the world with the release of its R1 reasoning model in January 2025 and its V3 model in December 2024. DeepSeek said its V3 model was trained on 2,048 Nvidia H800 chips. It did not disclose the chips it used to train R1 or V3.1.
South China Morning Post
22 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
Overseas AI data centre demand powers up China's diesel generator exports
China's exports of diesel generator sets are on the rise as the global boom in artificial intelligence (AI) drives investment in data centres, which in turn is fuelling demand for reliable backup power systems – an area where diesel units remain critical. Analysts said diesel generator sets sell for higher prices overseas, opening up vast opportunities for overseas market growth. In the first seven months of this year, China exported 502,463 diesel generator sets, up more than 20 per cent year on year. The value of the shipments rose more than 28 per cent to US$2.52 billion, according to data released on Wednesday by the General Administration of Customs in Beijing. In July alone, China exported 74,962 diesel generator sets, registering an 8.2 per cent year-on-year increase, while the value climbed 22.9 per cent to US$382.55 million, customs data showed. The rise in diesel generator set exports comes as growing demand for AI services and related computing capacity drives investment in data centres , where diesel units play a critical role as backup power to keep them running during grid outages. Diesel generator sets made in China sell for around 3 million yuan (US$417,807) domestically and about 4 million yuan abroad, according to a note released by analysts at GF Securities this week. 'In the future, the valuation system for diesel generator sets will shift from domestic computing infrastructure benchmarks to international pricing, opening up vast opportunities in overseas markets and expanding long-term market value,' they said.
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
India to ban ‘harmful' online money games, threatening US$3.6 billion industry
India 's parliament on Thursday passed a bill to ban online games played with money in a move that threatens the survival of the popular fantasy gaming sector, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's government flagged the high risk of financial harm. The sudden ban has shocked an industry backed by venture capital firms like Tiger Global and Peak XV Partners and which was set to be worth US$3.6 billion in India by 2029. Executives fear imminent job losses and a complete shutdown of many app-based businesses, which attracted billions from foreign investors. The bill prohibits 'harmful' online money gaming services, advertisements and financial transactions related to them, with the government also citing the psychological harm they can cause. 'It is the duty of the government and the parliament to take strict action against social evils, which keep erupting time and again,' federal IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in parliament on Thursday. India's upper house of parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill 2025 after the lower house cleared it earlier this week. The president must sign the bill into law, which, although there is no set date, is considered a formality.
