Malaysia's top lender, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), said its fourth-quarter profit fell by a third as it set aside more money for bad loans and potential losses from its bid to gain control of an Indonesian lender.
The state-controlled bank, which has been on an acquisition spree abroad to grow as it faces rising competition at home, said the operating environment in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region would be challenging due to rising inflation and slower economic growth.
Maybank, whose proposed acquisition of Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) was blocked by the Malaysian central bank last month, reported a net profit of 703 million ringgit ($208 million) for the three months to end-June, down 33 percent from last year's 1.05 billion ringgit.
The bank's net profit for the financial year ended June 30 was 2.93 billion ringgit, down from 3.18 billion a year earlier and below the 3.22 billion ringgit forecast by 15 analysts polled by Reuters Estimates.
Maybank's overseas revenue comes mostly from neighbouring Singapore, although it has operations in other Asian countries such as Brunei, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan. Long criticised for being too slow to expand overseas, Maybank bought another 5 percent of Pakistan's MCB Bank for $213 million earlier this month, raising its stake in the South Asian nation's biggest lender to 20 percent.
It also bought this year 15 percent of Vietnam's An Binh Bank for $135 million. But Malaysia's central bank revoked its approval of Maybank's $2.7 billion planned take-over of BII last month on the grounds that the bank may incur losses from the selldown of BII shares to comply with new Indonesian take-over rules.
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