Colonial National Bank

Last updated
Colonial National Bank
Public
Industry Finance and Insurance
Founded National Bank of Fiji (1976)
Headquarters Fiji
Products Comprehensive and integrated range of financial products and services
Parent Bank South Pacific
Website www.colonial.com.fj

The full name of the bank is National Bank of Fiji trading as Colonial National Bank. The bank is as of December 2009 a subsidiary of Bank South Pacific and has the largest branch network in Fiji. It also has a majority holding in one of the two merchant banks in the country.

Bank South Pacific

Bank South Pacific is the largest bank in Papua New Guinea, with 35 branches throughout the country and in 6 countries. BSP currently services over 650,000 business banking customers throughout the Pacific. As at 31 December 2014, BSP had total assets valued at K15.8 billion. Bank South Pacific is listed on the Port Moresby Stock Exchange.

Fiji country in Oceania

Fiji, officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean about 1,100 nautical miles northeast of New Zealand's North Island. Its closest neighbours are Vanuatu to the west, New Caledonia to the southwest, New Zealand's Kermadec Islands to the southeast, Tonga to the east, the Samoas and France's Wallis and Futuna to the northeast, and Tuvalu to the north. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about 18,300 square kilometres (7,100 sq mi). The most outlying island is Ono-i-Lau. The two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, account for 87% of the total population of 898,760. The capital, Suva, on Viti Levu, serves as the country's principal cruise-ship port. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu's coasts, either in Suva or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi—where tourism is the major local industry—or Lautoka, where the sugar-cane industry is paramount. Due to its terrain, the interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited.

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History

The Fijian government established the National Bank of Fiji in 1976 on the base of the Savings Bank of Fiji, founded in 1907. After the 1987 coup, the NBF made a push to serve the indigenous Fijian population (in contradistinction to the Fijian population of Indian origin) by introducing new services, expanding its staff by hiring mainly indigenous Fijians, and increasing its lending to indigenous Fijians. In mid-1995 NBF was running bad and doubtful debts of at least F$90 million. By 1996 NBF’s bad and doubtful debts were estimated at over F$220million, or 8 percent of GDP. In 1998 the government split NBF into a "good bank", which it privatized, and a "bad bank", which took over the non-performing loans. The government essentially raided the national provident fund to fund the bad bank. In 1999 the financial services group, Colonial Ltd, acquired 51% of National Bank of Fiji, which it renamed Colonial National Bank. In 2000 Colonial Ltd. merged with the Commonwealth Bank. On 27 January 2006 the Commonwealth Bank acquired the remaining 49% stake in Colonial National Bank from the Fiji government. As of December 2009 Papua New Guinea's Bank South Pacific made a complete acquisition of Colonial National from the Commonwealth Bank thus in proceeding months Colonial National will re-brand itself as a branch of BSP. [1]

A bad bank is a corporate structure to isolate illiquid and high risk assets held by a bank or a financial organisation, or perhaps a group of banks or financial organisations. A bank may accumulate a large portfolio of debts or other financial instruments which unexpectedly increase in risk, making it difficult for the bank to raise capital, for example through sales of bonds. In these circumstances, the bank may wish to segregate its "good" assets from its "bad" assets through the creation of a bad bank. The goal of the segregation is to allow investors to assess the bank's financial health with greater certainty. A bad bank might be established by one bank or financial institution as part of a strategy to deal with a difficult financial situation, or by government or some other official institution as part of an official response to financial problems across a number of institutions in the financial sector.

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Papua New Guinea constitutional monarchy in Oceania

Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an Oceanian country that occupies the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and its offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean north of Australia. Its capital, located along its southeastern coast, is Port Moresby. The western half of New Guinea forms the Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua.

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