China CITIC Bank Q3 profit drops 14.66 pct

China CITIC Bank, a mid-sized lender, said late Monday its net profit fell 14.66 percent year on year to 7.85 billion yuan (1.25 billion U.S. dollars) in the third quarter.

The bank ascribed the drop to a 4-billion-yuan reserve of impairment losses.

For the first three quarters, the bank's net profit increased 12.38 percent from a year ago to 27.23 billion yuan, easing for a 29-percent growth in the first half of this year, CITIC Bank said in a statement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The bank's business revenues amounted to 66.28 billion yuan at the end of September, up 19.52 percent year on year.

By the end of September, the lender's capital adequacy ratio, which measures a bank's ability to deal with risk assets, rose to 13.72 percent from 13.4 percent recorded in the first half of 2012. The core capital adequacy ratio strengthened by 0.02 percentage points to 10.07 percent, the statement said.

The bank's non-performing loan ratio dipped 0.01 percentage points from the end of June, standing at 0.6 percent at the end of September, the statement said.