ICBC halts increase in bad loans in Q2

Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, the world’s biggest lender by assets, reported the first decline in its bad-loan ratio since 2012 in the second quarter, as the bank raced to dispose of nonperforming credit. ICBC wrote off 42 billion yuan ($6.3 billion) of loans in the first half, 35 percent more than a year earlier, an earnings statement showed on Tuesday. Nonperforming loans as a proportion of total credit declined to 1.55 percent in the second quarter from 1.66 percent in the first.