Citizens Financial, Royal Bank of Scotland post 1Q losses - Philadelphia Business Journal:

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Citizens Bank’s ultimate parent, , said Friday it suffereds a first-quarter loss of 857 million pounds ($1.29 billion) due to write-offs from the financial crisis that increasefd despite a jumpin revenues. The loss comparex with a profit of 245 million pound s inthe year-earlier period. The main culprit for Providence, R.I.-basedd Citizens appears to have beenimpairmengt losses, which continued to rise and were $684 million comparefd with $394 million and $651 million in the firs t and fourth quarters of 2008, Delinquencies were $2.8 billion, or 2.61 percen of loans, compared with $2.4 billion at the end of 2008.
Non-interesyt income was down $82 million at $358 Activity in core retail banking was also subdued reflectinb the difficulteconomic conditions. Direct expense increased by $83 millionh to $556 million reflecting a number of items including increased Federall DepositInsurance Corp. insurancs costs ($35 million), mortgage servicing rights higher pension costs andcollection costs. Loans and advance s were slightly downat $110.5 billion reflecting subdues customer demand in some Deposit trends improved in the quartedr with deposits up $3.3 billion at $97.6t billion compared with the end of 2008. Total assetw were listed at $157.9 billion, down from $160 billion in firsty quarter 2008.
Royal Bank of Scotland’s new CEO, Stephej Hester, warned that the parent bank’s problems would most likely continuethrough 2010. RBS, whichb is now 70 percenty owned by theBritish government, took a charge of 2.86 billiob pounds against bad debts in the first quartee on top of other writedowns of 797 millio pounds on credit default swaps and otherr investments. Combined with previously disclosed total impairment losses and creditt market writedownswere 4.9 billion pounds. Impairment losses have grownm to 1.3 percent of the bank's loan portfolio, up from 0.9 perceny at the end of last year.
Hester said additionapl impairments of nearly 3 billion pounds were likelyh in each of the nextthree quarters. RBS did experienced a 26 percent increasein revenue, spearheadec by a 131 percent jump in income from its Globapl Banking and Markets division. The first-quarter loss followed the bank's disastrousx results last year, when it lost a British corporate recorfdof 24.1 billion pounds.