BEIJING - China Cinda Asset Management, one of the country's four State-owned bad-debt banks, reported a 47.7 percent increase in profits in the first half (H1) of 2015 as it acquired more non-performing assets from lenders.

Profits attributable to equity holders reached 7.82 billion yuan ($1.22 billion) in the first half, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it is listed.

China Cinda is one of four asset management companies set up in 1999 to deal with 1.4 trillion yuan of non-performing loans (NPL) bought off State-owned banks hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

The company acquired 26.2 billion yuan of distressed assets from banks in the first six months of 2015, up 264.7 percent year on year, as Chinese lenders saw accelerated NPL growth.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's largest commercial bank, said Thursday that its outstanding NPLs rose 31.3 percent from the end of 2014 to the end of June this year, as the economy continued to soften.

In H1, China Cinda made 10.99 billion yuan from distressed debt assets it disposed of, up 11.2 percent from a year earlier.

ICBC's total assets expanded 20.9 percent from the end of last year to 657.96 billion yuan as of the end of June.

It had put in a bid for Nanyang Commercial Bank, from the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd, it said in the statement.