HÀ NỘI — Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) hoped to complete the handling of bad debts caused by six companies of  former banking tycoon Nguyễn Đức Kiên by the end of this year, it said at the annual shareholders meeting on Monday.

Nguyễn Đức Kiên, who was the former co-founder of the bank and one of the top bankers in Việt Nam, was sentenced to 30 years in jail in 2014 for fraud, tax evasion, illegal trade and deliberate misdeeds resulting in serious consequences.

The bad loans of some companies run by Kiên totalled nearly VNĐ5.8 trillion (US$257.8 million) as of December 31, 2015.

ACB planned to finish collecting all the bad debts from those six firms by 2018, according to the plan that was approved by the State Bank of Việt Nam in 2015.

Under the previous plan, ACB planned to collect the debts over four years, starting from 2015, at a rate of  VNĐ814 billion, VNĐ2.2 trillion, VNĐ1.8 trillion and VNĐ1 trillion.

But ACB General Director Đỗ Minh Toàn said that the collection was ahead of schedule, with VNĐ3 trillion collected from those companies in 2016.

With the current progress, Toàn hoped that the bank will be able to complete handling all of the bad debts caused by the six companies this year.

The bank projects to raise its yearly pre-tax profit by 32 per cent to VNĐ2.2 trillion for 2017, and targets a 16-per cent rise in the total assets, credit growth and capital mobilisation and a bad debt ratio of below 2 per cent. In the first quarter of 2017, the bank earned a pre-tax profit of VNĐ595 billion.

ACB will pay a 10-per cent dividend for last year’s performance by shares and increase its capital to VNĐ11.25 trillion. Besides, the bank plans to extract VNĐ100 billion from the 2017 projected profit to buy back shares.

In 2016, ACB recorded a post-tax profit of VNĐ1.66 trillion, an increase of 27 per cent from 2015. The bank also recorded returns on total assets (ROA) and returns on total equity (ROE) of 0.61 per cent and 9.87 per cent.

On December 31, 2016, ACB recorded total assets of VNĐ234 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 16 per cent, and a bad debt of 0.88 per cent, down from 1.3 per cent at the end of 2015. — VNS