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BANCO de
Oro, the country’s second-largest lender, is not
expecting too much growth this year as the company will
focus on its integration with recently acquired
Equitable-PCI Bank.
Teresita Sy-Coson,
the bank’s chairman, told reporters that this year will
not be a banner year for the BDO and they will be busy
paying the maturing loans of EPCI, which has an existing
$200-million issue that is callable in July.
BDO
merged with EPCI Bank on May 31, 2007.
“We are
going to have growth [this year]… it will be more than
last year. But there will be no excitement. We will
just continue to grow,” Sy-Coson said, but she did not
give details of the bank’s revenue projection this year.
“We have
to be more aggressive and flexible. We are going to be
aggressive.”
Earlier
this month, BDO got the go-ahead of monetary officials
to raise P15-billion capital through Tier 2 notes, an
interest-bearing debt paper but with a limited maturity
period of at least five years.
The
bank’s issuance will mature in 10 years.
The bank
hired the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., ING Bank
N.V. and Standard Chartered Bank to arrange the new Tier
2 issue.
BDO
reported a slight growth in its net profit to P6.5
billion in 2007 from the previous P6.4 billion.
“This
result is lower than the bank’s income guidance of P7
billion, primarily due to nonrecurring expenses related
to integration and the settlement of taxes under the
Bureau of Internal Revenue’s abatement program,” the
company said in a recent disclosure.
Its
net-interest income rose 11 percent to P21.4 billion on
better loan and deposit mix. Gross customer loans grew
15 percent driven by brisk demand for higher
margin-consumer loans, despite the flat movement in net
loans and other receivables, which settled at P311.6
billion.
Total
deposits fell 5 percent to P445.4 billion despite a
healthy growth in low-cost deposits as the bank reduced
its dependence on high-cost funding.
BDO is
the country’s second-largest bank with assets of P608.1
billion and capital funds of P58.8 billion.
It has a
network of 670 branches and more than 1,200 automated
teller machines nationwide. |
