Tokyo Star lifts year profit forecast by 35 pct

Tokyo Star Bank Ltd (8384.T: Quote, Profile, Research), up for sale by its majority owner, private equity fund Lone Star [LS.UL], lifted its full-year profit forecast by 35 percent on Friday, helped by a property sale.
Dallas-based Lone Star has been in exclusive talks to sell its two-thirds stake in Tokyo Star, a regional bank, to Japanese private equity firm Advantage Partners.
For the year to March 2008, Tokyo Star said it now expected a net profit of 23 billion yen ($200 million), up 35 percent from its previous forecast of 17 billion yen.
Recurring profit was unchanged from the lender's previous estimate of 21.5 billion yen.
The bank said it would book a larger-than-expected special profit of 18.1 billion yen from the sale of property in central Tokyo.
Although a niche player in Japanese banking, Tokyo Star has benefited from solid growth of its deposit-linked mortgages and consumer loans to high-income borrowers.
Tokyo Star said before the close of Tokyo stock trading that it would revise its forecasts later in the day, sending its shares down 3.3 percent to 322,000 yen as investors bet on a downward revision.
The Tokyo bank index (.IBNKS.T: Quote, Profile, Research) finished up 3.3 percent.
Lone Star acquired Tokyo Star's predecessor, Tokyo Sowa Bank, in 2001 for 40.4 billion yen after the lender collapsed under a pile of problem loans. ($1=114.98 yen)