The Re­pub­lic Bank Group has record­ed a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of $572.7 mil­lion for the half-year end­ed March 31, an in­crease of 2.1 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year. To­tal as­sets stood at $59.7 bil­lion at March 31, an in­crease of 1.8 per cent from March 2014.

Re­pub­lic Bank's chair­man Ronald F deC Har­ford, in an­nounc­ing the group's re­sults said, de­spite sub­dued eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, net in­ter­est in­come grew by $42.7 mil­lion (3.8 per cent), which was dri­ven by growth in the loan port­fo­lio of $1.3 bil­lion.

"We have al­so ben­e­fit­ed from a re­duc­tion in loan im­pair­ment ex­pense by 56 per cent when com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year," Har­ford said.

He was al­so pleased to an­nounce that the group was suc­cess­ful in re­solv­ing all le­gal hur­dles in Ghana.

"The manda­to­ry of­fer to all the share­hold­ers of HFC Bank (Ghana) Lim­it­ed has been made and we have every con­fi­dence of gain­ing ma­jor­i­ty con­trol in the next few weeks," he said.

On April 1, a share pur­chase agree­ment was ex­e­cut­ed to ac­quire RBC Roy­al Bank (Suri­name) NV at a cost of US$39.8 mil­lion.

This trans­ac­tion is sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals and is ex­pect­ed to close on June 30.

This ac­qui­si­tion will add fur­ther US$525 mil­lion to the group's as­set base.

The board of di­rec­tors has de­clared a half-year div­i­dend of $1.25 (2014:$1.25) per share, payable on May 28.

Har­ford ex­pressed his on­go­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the con­tin­ued sup­port of man­age­ment, staff and cus­tomers of the Re­pub­lic Bank Group.