Spanish banking giant Santander has today reported a fall in 2010 net profits, due to changes on bad loan provisions.<\/p>\n
The bank, which is the euro zone\u2019s largest, said net income fell to \u20ac2.1 billion from \u20ac2.2 billion a year earlier.<\/p>\n
Before the changes to one-off provisions, which were put in place as a precautionary reserve for loans turning bad, net profit would have only fallen by 3%, the bank said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis consistency was achieved in the worst economic context in several decades and is due in large part to the geographical and business diversification of the group,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Spanish banks have been hit hard by the economic downturn \u2013 partly due to the slump in the country\u2019s once booming housing market.<\/p>\n
The slump has led to many developers and homeowners unable to meet their loan payments.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the bank said it experienced a 23% decline in net profit in continental Europe, but saw profits rise 25% in Latin America. It also enjoyed a 31% surge in Brazil, while net profit rose 11% in Britain.<\/p>\n
In a statement, President Emilio Botin said: \u201cBanco Santander has had another excellent year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bank said its core capital ratio, a measure of financial strength, stood at 8.8% at the end of 2010 \u2013 against 8.5% in September.<\/p>\n
Santander has a major UK presence after acquiring Abbey for \u00a39.5 billion back in 2004.<\/p>\n
In July 2008, it rescued troubled mortgage lender, Alliance & Leicester, and a few months later, it took ownership of Bradford & Bingley\u2019s savings business and branch network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spanish banking giant Santander has today reported a fall in 2010 net profits, due to changes on bad loan provisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}