BM enjoys good growth thanks to mortgage loans

After the first nine months of 2005 the bank's net profit amounted to zl.190 million and the return on capital rate increased from 11.6% to 12.8%. "The main source for the revenue growth is the improvement of the results of the bank's basic activity. One-off events will be of decreasing importance for our results," stated BM's president Boguslaw Kott. At the end of September the bank's assets amounted to zl.22.8 billion that is zl.2.2 billion more than a year ago. Almost two thirds of this increase may be attributed to mortgage loans whose value doubled and amounted to zl.2.9 billion in Q3 2005. Within the first nine months of this year, Millennium granted mortgage loans worth zl.1.6 billion which is four times more than in the same period in 2004. The bank's solvency ratio amounted to 18.8%. When asked if in this case the bank would consider an extra dividend pay-out in order to decrease its capital, Kott stated that the bank was able to use the funds in a relatively short time. "It does not seem to be a reasonable approach: to decrease the capital in one year and to ask the shareholders for a capital injection in another. Within the next several months we will have more knowledge on the subject." (Parkiet, p. 3) E.B.