(Singapore) – Southeast Asia’s largest banking operation, DBS, is expecting to deliver a sharp drop in 2001 net profit in response to increased bad loan provisioning and higher than expected merger related costs.Analysts are variously suggesting a 25 percent lower net profit of S$1.04 billion (US$570 million) for 2001, highly sensitive to the actual level of provisioning in the results, possibly as high as S$400 million and goodwill write downs in the Bank’s Dao Heng acquisition.
These are based in part on DBS’ 20 percent fall to S$830 million in net profit for the nine months to September 30 last, with a wide profit range forecast by analysts for the last quarter of S$74 to S$265 million.