LONDON May 1 (Reuters) – Britain’s biggest retail bank Lloyds Banking Group reported a 21 percent rise in underlying pretax profit for the first quarter, reflecting an improved margin and lower losses for bad debts.
The state-backed lender said on Friday it made a pretax profit before one-off items of 2.2 billion pounds ($ 3.4 billion) for the three months to the end of March, at the top end of expectations, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.
The bank said losses from bad debts fell 59 percent from a year ago to 177 million pounds and margins were better than expected, and it should exceed previous guidance on its net interest margin this year. ($ 1 = 0.6517 pounds) (Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Carolyn Cohn)
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