Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) hoped to complete the handling of bad debts caused by six companies of former banking tycoon Nguyen Duc Kien by the end of this year, it said at the annual shareholders meeting on Monday.

Nguyen Duc Kien, who was the former co-founder of the bank and one of the top bankers in Viet 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 Kien totalled nearly VND5.8 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 Viet Nam in 2015.

Under the previous plan, ACB planned to collect the debts over four years, starting from 2015, at a rate of VND814 billion, VND2.2 trillion, VND1.8 trillion and VND1 trillion.

But ACB General Director Do Minh Toan said that the collection was ahead of schedule, with VND3 trillion collected from those companies in 2016.

With the current progress, Toan 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 VND2.2 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 VND595 billion.

ACB will pay a 10-per cent dividend for last year’s performance by shares and increase its capital to VND11.25 trillion. Besides, the bank plans to extract VND100 billion from the 2017 projected profit to buy back shares.

In 2016, ACB recorded a post-tax profit of VND1.66 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 VND234 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