Regulator unearths $7 billion of bad loans at big Indian banks
Bad loans at India's five biggest state-run banks were about Rs456.8 billion ($6.8 billion) more than the lenders had assessed
Mumbai: Bad loans at India’s five biggest state-run banks were about Rs456.8 billion ($6.8 billion) more than the lenders had assessed.
Audits by the regulator for the year ended 31 March 2017 revealed the discrepancies, triggering large losses as the banks increased provisions. If you add IDBI Bank Ltd, which doesn’t feature among the biggest but got the largest chunk of a public bailout, the figure rises to about $8.3 billion.
Even so, shares of Bank of India, which on Monday became the latest to report the divergence, surged 4.7% before the results in Mumbai as investors speculate that Indian lenders have now accounted for most of the stress on their books.
Bank of India’s loss tripled to Rs39.7 billion for the quarter ended 31 March 2018, from Rs10.5 billion a year earlier, the lender told the stock exchange on Monday.
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