Stocks Observer. com

By Saad Hasan KARACHI: NIB Bank on Monday announced a loss of Rs7.5 billion for 2008 after making heavy provisioning for bad loans in its books in a bid to raise prospects for this year, President and CEO Khwaja Iqbal Hassan said. Total credit provisioning of Rs9.2bn and goodwill impairment loss of Rs1 billion on account of acquisition of PICIC reflect the bank’s very conservative calculations, he added. “This means we have taken the complete hit and from now on we will be posting profits,” he said, adding that Jan-March quarter of 2009 is already showing signs of good result. “We also expect recovery of Rs6bn from bad loans in next couple of years.” The loss also includes investments inherited from PICIC. This result is the first after NIB completed acquisition of PICIC’s insurance and asset management companies and PICIC Commercial Bank in 2007. Talking to a group of journalists here, Hassan said now the merged entities have been aligned together to focus on NIB’s strategy of segment