EnTie Bank to auction NT$8 B.-N$10 B. NPLs in Oct.

Taipei, May 19, 2003 (CENS)--EnTie Commercial Bank plans to sell NT$8 billion to NT$10 billion worth of non-performing loans to asset management companies in October, a bank's top executive said late last week.

Losses resulting from the planned sale will be written off in five year so that it won't affect the bank's profitability this year, the bank's President Tsai Ching-yun said at the annual shareholders meeting.

The bank said it won't pay out any dividend this year after recording a net loss of NT$1.483 billion, or NT$1.08 per share, in 2002.

The losses last year came as the bank wrote off NT$8.5 billion in bad loans, Tsai said.

However, Tsai told shareholders that the bank is expected to record earnings this year. For the first four months, EnTie Bank posted a net profit of NT$689 million, or NT$0.49 per share.

Tsai said that the planned auction will help the bank lower its broad measure of overdue loan ratio to below 5% by the end of the year. However, Tsai didn't say how much the bank's broad measure of overdue loan ratio was.

Excluding those loans under surveillance, the bank's overdue loan ratio was 4.79% at the end of last year.