Sumitomo Bank and Sakura Bank returned to the black in fiscal 1999, partly due to gains from sales of stocks and fewer bad-loan writeoffs compared to the year before, according to their earnings reports released Monday.
On an unconsolidated basis, Sumitomo -- which will merge with Sakura in April -- posted 176.4 billion yen in pretax profit for the year that ended March 31, compared to the 741 billion yen loss for fiscal 1998.
The profit came despite the 680 billion yen the bank wrote off in bad loans. The size of writeoffs is smaller than the 1.072 trillion yen it logged a year before but is still more than five times the bank's original estimate announced a year ago. At the end of fiscal 1998, Sumitomo estimated its bad loan disposal for fiscal 1999 would be 120 billion yen.