Covid-19 pandemic delivers rare earnings blow to Chinese banks

China’s “big four” banks have suffered a rare profit decline in the first half of the year, joining a growing body of financial institutions worldwide that have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Bad-loan provisions rose as the pandemic hammered Chinese business activity, causing a historic first-quarter contraction and weighing on an economy that was already in long-term growth slowdown. Bloomberg News said the profit declines — reported over the weekend — were the largest in more than a decade for the banks, which are closely supervised by the Chinese government and for years have typically posted slight but steady…