Standard Chartered not seeking new capital: chair

HONG KONG (Reuters) - UK lender Standard Chartered Plc (STAN.L) is not looking to raise new capital and believes relatively high emerging market growth rates will help buffer it from the global financial crisis, its chairman said on Tuesday.

"We're very comfortable with our capital ratios," Mervyn Davies, the lender's chairman, told a media briefing in Hong Kong.

"I never say never ... but we're very well capitalized," he added, when pressed on whether the firm was ruling out raising fresh funds.

The London-based bank generates about two-thirds of its revenue in Asia, which is seeing slowing growth as economic conditions in the United States and Europe worsen.

Standard Chartered's London-listed shares have lost nearly 46 percent since the start of the year.

Analysts have said that weakening economies in Asia could put pressure on Standard Chartered to raise capital to match bigger capital cushions held by rivals who have raised cash privately or from governments to prepare them for a downturn.

Late last month, analysts at Citigroup estimated that Standard Chartered needed to raise $5 billion of capital, including at least $3 billion in equity, and said forecasts for the bank's earnings were vulnerable to "substantial downgrades" next year as Asia slows.

But Davies reiterated comments in the bank's October 28 trading statement that growth in Asia, particularly China and India, would be strong relative to the sputtering economies of the West.

He said the global financial crisis would also force many competitors to retreat from Asia, a long-term positive for his firm.

"Banks that are well capitalized, banks that are very liquid will obviously be the winners. I think Standard Chartered is one of those winners," he said.

"We were one of the few international banks that now is positioned for growth."

But Davies, a fluent Welsh speaker, said Standard Chartered would not use its position to aggressively pursue acquisitions, preferring instead to focus on organic growth.

"We're going to be prudent. We're going to be careful," he said.

"If something comes along and it's exceptional value, fine. But no rush."

(Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree)