China’s economic slowdown has checked the dynamic growth of its largest banks, with half-year results showing increases in bad loans and squeezed net interest margins. The big four state-owned banks posted feeble profit growth for the first half of 2015, marking a stark contrast to the vigorous double-digit growth of previous years (see chart one).
The largest profit increase was posted by the Bank of China, which is also the smallest of the group by assets, where the profit inched up 1.69% to Rmb94.99bn ($14.95bn), significantly below the 10.97% increase for the same period last year.
