UCBH Holdings, Inc. Appoints Mr. John Kerr as Senior Vice President and Chief Credit Officer

Business Wire, Oct 13, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- UCBH Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq:UCBH), the holding company of United Commercial Bank (UCB(TM)), announced the appointment of Mr. John Kerr as Senior Vice President and Chief Credit Officer of United Commercial Bank. Mr. Kerr succeeds Mr. Ebrahim Shabudin who had been serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer of United Commercial Bank since January 2004 until his recent promotion to Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. Mr. Kerr will report directly to Mr. Shabudin.

Prior to joining United Commercial Bank, Mr. Kerr served as Senior Portfolio Manager for Primus Financial Products, an AAA-rated credit insurer in New York, a company in which he played a key role in building the business from a start-up in 2002 to its going public in 2004. Formerly, Mr. Kerr was with Bank of America for 18 years, including senior positions in credit approval, corporate and commercial banking, private banking, and international banking. As a senior credit executive, he built and trained a team of 110 credit professionals based in five countries, approving lines of credits and transactions on a daily basis. He also spent 11 years with Royal Bank of Canada in business development and credit in corporate and commercial banking, in strategic planning, and in international banking.

"We are very pleased to welcome Mr. Kerr to our senior management team," said Mr. Thomas S. Wu, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of UCBH Holdings, Inc. "Mr. Kerr is a global banker with more than 29 years of broad banking experience and a focused expertise on global lending and credit administration. His experience will be particularly valuable to UCBH as we continue to build our operations domestically and across the Pacific Rim. We look forward to Mr. Kerr in making significant contributions to UCBH," concluded Mr. Wu.

About UCBH Holdings, Inc.

UCBH Holdings, Inc. is the holding company for United Commercial Bank, a state-chartered commercial bank, which is the leading California bank serving the ethnic Chinese community. The Bank has 46 California branches/offices located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Stockton and Greater Los Angeles, four branches in Greater New York, a branch in Hong Kong, and representative offices in Shenzhen, China and Taipei, Taiwan. UCB, headquartered in San Francisco, provides commercial banking services to small- and medium-sized businesses, and professionals, in a variety of industries, as well as consumer banking services to individuals. The Bank offers a full range of lending activities, including commercial real estate and construction loans, commercial credit facilities, international trade finance services, loans guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration, residential mortgages, home equity lines of credit, and online banking services for businesses and consumers. For additional information, visit the web site for United Commercial Bank at www.ibankUNITED.com or the web site for UCBH Holdings, Inc. at www.ucbh.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this release may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based upon specific assumptions that may or may not prove correct. Forward-looking statements are also subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors relating to the Company's and the Bank's operations and business environment, all of which are difficult to predict, and many of which are beyond the control of the Company and the Bank. The factors include, among others: economic and business conditions in the areas and markets in which the Company and the Bank operate, particularly those affecting loans secured by real estate; deterioration or improvement in the ability of the Bank's borrowers to pay their debts to the Bank; market fluctuations such as those affecting interest and foreign exchange rates and the value of securities in which the Bank invests; competition from other financial institutions, whether banks, investment banks, insurance companies or others; the ability of the Bank to assimilate acquisitions, enter new markets and lines of business, and open new branches, successfully; changes in business strategies; changes in tax law and governmental regulation of financial institutions; demographic changes; and other risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the documents the Company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The foregoing may cause the actual results and performance of the Company and the Bank to be materially different from the results and performance indicated or suggested by the forward-looking statements. Further description of the risks and uncertainties are included in detail in the Company's current, quarterly and annual reports, as filed with the SEC.