Category: Banking and Finance

June 19, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Commercial Bank of Ceylon and Bank of America Merrill Lynch had clinched awards for the best bank and best foreign investment bank for Sri Lanka given by Finance Asia, a financial magazine. It also did a large equity investment banking deal arranging the sale of a stake worth […]

June 19, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s banking industry faces ‘very high’ economic and credit risk and the industry itself faces “very high risk” in its institutional framework amid regulatory conflicts, a rating agency has said. Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency gave Sri Lanka a score of ‘8’ on a scale where the highest […]

June 18, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s state-run Bank of Ceylon, the island’s largest commercial bank has topped a trillion rupees (7. 6 billion US dollars) in assets by the end of May 2012, officials said. Chairman Gamini Wickramasinghe said a target for one trillion in assets and ten billion rupees in profits was set […]

June 11, 2012 (LBO) – Loans to private borrowers from commercial banks collapsed to just 18. 7 billion rupees in April 2012, from 55 billion rupees a month earlier, the lowest since June 2010, amid heavy state borrowing, official data showed. Loans to private borrowers from banks rose 34 percent from a year earlier to […]

June 02, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s LOLC group, which has interest ranging from financial services, property, leisure and plantations, posted net profits in the March 2012 quarter rose 232 percent to 1. 99 billion rupees, helped by strong other income and fair value gains. Leisure made 2.3 billion rupees helped by 2.8 billion rupees […]

June 01, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s The Finance Company Plc, which is under regulatory restructure lost 212 million rupees in the March 2012 quarter, sharply lower than the 2.0 billion it lost a year earlier. The firm reported losses of 1.33 rupees per share for the quarter. In the full year to March 2012 […]

May 28, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Central Bank said, The Finance Company, a firm that is being bailed out under regulatory supervision is stable and expressed confidence that it will return to profits. The Central Bank said The Finance has increased its deposits by 5.36 percent and its lending portfolio by 11 percent in […]

May 28, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Treasury secretary P B Jayasundera said banks should lend more to agriculture and slammed lenders for financing too much trade and consumption activities. He said only about 3.0 percent of total credit is given to the tea sector, about 0.5 percent to fisheries. “Instead money goes to consumption […]

May 26, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka DFCC Vardhana Bank’s profits in the March 2012 quarter rose 161 percent to 150 million rupees from a year earlier, helped by higher business volumes and provision reversals, interim accounts showed. The bank’s gross non-performing loan ratio grew to 4.54 percent by end March from 4.35 percent in […]

May 24, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s securities watchdog has suspended the chief executive of Taprobane Securities Private Limited, pending a probe related to a controversial share transaction between a stat bank and a troubled finance company. In a directive to the chairman and board of directors of Taprobane Securities on May 23, the Securities […]

May 24, 2012 (LBO)- Fitch Ratings agency on Thursday cut Sri Lanka’s National Development Bank’s credit outlook to negative, from stable, but its underlying rating was confirmed at ‘AA(lka)’. NDB’s subordinated debentures were also confirmed at ‘AA-(lka)’. Fitch said the cut reflects NDB’s increased risk profile in terms of its decreasing capitalisation alongside aggressive loan […]

May 23, 2012 (LBO) — Fraudulent practices across business activities has risen over the past two-years in Sri Lanka, with billions of rupees lost each year to economic crime, a new study showed. Awareness of fraud is always the first step towards managing the issue. It’s the first step towards beginning a new era of […]