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

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Citizens Bank’s ultimate parent, , said Fridag it suffered a first-quarter loss of 857 milliohn pounds ($1.29 billion) due to write-offs from the financiak crisis that increased despite a jump in The loss compared with a profit of 245 millio n pounds inthe year-earlier period. The main culprity for Providence, R.I.-based Citizensd appears to have beenimpairment losses, which continued to rise and were $684 milliomn compared with $394 million and $651 million in the firsgt and fourth quarters of 2008, respectively. Delinquenciesz were $2.8 billion, or 2.61 percenrt of loans, compared with $2.4 billion at the end of 2008. Non-interes t income was down $82 million at $358 million.
Activit in core retail banking was also subdued reflectinhg the difficulteconomic conditions. Direct expenses increasesd by $83 million to $556 million reflecting a number of itemx including increased Federal DepositInsurance Corp. insurancde costs ($35 million), mortgagw servicing rights amortization, higher pension costs and collection costs. Loans and advances were slightly downat $110.65 billion reflecting subdued custome demand in some sectors. Deposig trends improved in the quarter with depositssup $3.3 billion at $97.65 billion compared with the end of 2008. Totak assets were listed at $157.9 billion, down from $160 billion in first quarter 2008.
Royalk Bank of Scotland’s new CEO, Stephen Hester, warned that the parenft bank’s problems would most likelt continuethrough 2010. RBS, which is now 70 percenty owned by the British took a chargeof 2.86 billion pounds against bad debtsx in the first quarter on top of other writedowns of 797 milliobn pounds on credit default swapd and other investments. Combine with previously disclosed losses, total impairment lossew and credit market writedownswere 4.9 billion Impairment losses have grown to 1.3 percent of the bank'zs loan portfolio, up from 0.
9 percent at the end of last Hester said additional impairments of nearlyh 3 billion pounds were likely in each of the next threr quarters. RBS did experience a 26 percent increase in spearheaded by a 131 percent jump in incomwe from its Global Banking andMarketas division. The first-quarter loss followed the bank's disastrous resultx last year, when it lost a Britishb corporate recordof 24.1 billion pounds.