Yasuda Trust & Banking Co. expects a pretax loss of 76 billion yen in the first half of fiscal 1997 as it plans to write off nonperforming loans worth 93 billion yen, the bank announced Oct. 3.Following the move initiated in September by the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Yasuda will accelerate its disposal of bad loans to quickly clean up its balance sheet and prepare for the nation's "Big Bang" financial deregulation.Through fiscal 1997, which ends next March, the trust bank will write off a total of 200 billion yen in nonperforming loans and its losses are expected to reach 98 billion yen. The bank hopes to post no loss from fiscal 1998, Vice President Takahiko Kiminami told reporters.The huge writeoff will force the bank to cancel shareholders' dividends -- for the first time in 50 years -- both at the first-half and the end of fiscal 1997, officials said. Besides the writeoff, an extra loss of 48 billion yen in the fiscal first-half -- a result of the appraisal loss of shares it had held -- will also force the bank into the red.As of May, the bank planned to write off 150 billion yen of bad loans during the current fiscal year. At the time, it still predicted a pretax profit of 4 billion yen in the first-half and 9 billion yen in the entire fiscal year.The bank's bad loans are expected to total 775 billion yen as of the end of September.
