CCB to sell bad loans to asset firms

China Construction Bank Corp will face continuous pressure on asset quality in the second half of the year and may sell some bad assets, a senior executive said on Monday at a news conference.

China's second-largest commercial bank doesn't rule out the possibility of selling some of its soured loans to asset management companies as a potential option to cope with deteriorating asset quality, said Pang Xiusheng, CCB's vice-president.

The bank held 80.3 billion yuan ($13.02 billion) of non-performing loans by the end of June, an increase of 5.7 billion yuan from the end of last year, in contrast with the more than the 3.7 billion increase in bad loans throughout 2012, according to its interim results released on Sunday.