Bocom eyes foreign assets after boosting net 65pc to 20b yuan

Net profit at Bank of Communications, the mainland's fifth-largest lender, hit only the lower end of market forecasts with a rise of 65.18 per cent last year to 20.27 billion yuan (HK$22.26 billion) from the previous year.

Despite robust fee income gains, the bottom line was below the median estimate of 21.23 billion yuan given by a Thomson Financial survey.

When announcing results yesterday, chairman Jiang Chaoliang noted the global impact of the United States subprime crisis.

Referring to comments by US President George Bush that the US welcomed international capital, including flows from sovereign wealth funds, Mr Jiang said it was 'the very first time' such a comment had been made by the country's leadership. 'It means the US subprime crisis has come to a point whereby it seeks attention from Chinese banks,' he said.

Mr Jiang said the lender was interested in acquiring assets in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific but would proceed with caution.

'We already have some targets on hand, but we have to be cautious,' he said, since the full extent of the subprime crisis was not yet known.

Net fee and commission income last year surged 137.21 per cent from a year earlier to 7.1 billion yuan, the bank reported. Interest income grew 36.03 per cent to 54.14 billion yuan.