Trading income hit prompts slump in UniCredit’s profits
UNICREDIT, Italy’s biggest bank, posted a 70 per cent drop in second-quarter net profit yesterday, hit by a slump in trading income and a goodwill impairment, sending the shares lower.
UniCredit, whose roots stretch back to a 15th-century Bologna municipal pawnshop, posted a net profit of €148m (£122.8m), including a €162m goodwill impairment charge stemming from the economic crisis in Kazakhstan. Analysts had forecast a consensus net profit of €251m.
The bank, the biggest lender in central and eastern Europe, also recorded €1.716bn in loan loss provisions over the quarter.
Trading revenues fell to €58m from €1bn in the same period in 2009, hit by the government debt crisis.
Net interest income – what a bank earns on loans less what it pays on deposits – was up 1.5 per cent quarter-on-quarter at €3.98bn.
UniCredit’s core tier one ratio, or the standard of capital held against risky assets, was 8.41 per cent at the end of June, down from 8.45 per cent in March.