Part-nationalized lender the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has posted a pre-tax loss of 44 million ($66.3 million) for the first quarter of the year, as losses on bad loans and toxic assets hit 4.9 billion.
In the same period of last year, the bank had reported a profit of 479 million.
The bank, which is 70% owned by the taxpayer following emergency bailouts by the UK government, slumped to the biggest annual loss in British corporate history last year. It lost 24.1 billion, which included 16.2 billion of writedowns on its assets, including the Dutch investment bank ABN Amro, which RBS bought in 2007.
RBS chief executive Stephen Hester said the bank expects credit conditions to continue to deteriorate over the coming months and that there will be a slowdown in activity on the financial markets compared to Q1.
“Some commentators are beginning to talk about economic recovery – we remain cautious … in the full expectation that both 2009 and 2010 will be very tough years for RBS,” he said.
According to the BBC, the latest results could trigger more job losses at the bank on top of the 11,700 redundancies in the UK and abroad already announced this year.
D.C.