Rabobank Group, the biggest Dutch mortgage lender, reported a 14 per cent decline in first-half earnings, hurt by a provision to settle probes into the Libor scandal and impaired property prices.
First-half profit fell to €1.11 billion from €1.29 billion a year earlier, Rabobank said in a statement today.
The provision for settlements was included in an earnings segment called “other income”, which declined 24 per cent to €944 million.
“Rabobank expects that certain regulators and authorities will conclude their investigations this year,” the Utrecht- based cooperative lender said. “It is likely that an assessment of the facts and circumstances will lead to settlements with these regulators and authorities.”
The bank is the only Dutch contributor to the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Probes into collusion in setting the Libor and Euribor benchmarks have resulted in more than $2.5 billion in fines for Barclays, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
Rabobank didn’t break out the size of the provision, saying that “could seriously prejudice its position” without elaborating.
The lender had previously said it received Libor- and Euribor-related subpoenas and information requests in nations including the Netherlands, UK, US and Japan.
The “other income” segment was also hurt by larger impairments on land held by the bank’s real-estate unit and lower bond prices, Rabobank said.
Libor, a measure of the cost for banks to borrow from each other, serves as a global benchmark for more than $300 trillion of contracts from mortgages to student loans.
First-half interest income was little changed at €4.46 billion from €4.47 billion, while fee and commission income dropped 11 per cent to €1.05 billion, Rabobank said.
Rabobank is selling assets and cutting costs to maintain profitability and capital buffers as the contracting Dutch economy pares demand for loans and makes it more difficult for borrowers to repay debts.
Bad-loan provisions were little changed at €1.1 billion in the first half, and are expected to remain high in the remainder of the year, chairman Piet Moerland said.
The bank said its core Tier 1 ratio, a measure of financial strength, was 12.9 per cent at the end of June. (Bloomberg)
