| CATEGORY: NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS SECTOR: BANKING |
Alliance & Leicester profits slip |
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Mon 27 Feb 2006
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LONDON (SHARECAST) - UK mortgage lender Alliance & Leicester saw a decline in profits over the last year but managed to deliver a record performance in mortgage lending.
The bank reported a pre-tax profit of £547m for the year to December from £592m a year earlier, on total income of £1.38bn compared with £1.37bn a year ago. Underlying basic earnings per share rose to 87.1p from 84.3p previously.
Alliance, which recently said it would make 350 redundancies in its back office operations, said it managed to improve efficiencies over the last year with total costs lower in 2005 than 2004.
The group delivered record net mortgage lending of £4.9bn and a market share of 5.4%, while new business banking accounts opened totalled 24,300, a 48% increase on the previous year.
The total dividend goes up 7% to 51.5p from 48.3p per share last time.
The group is looking to introduce a new secured personal loan product - the 'Homeowner Loan'.
“Whilst the secured lending sector is experiencing a 'soft landing', the personal unsecured lending sector is showing increasing levels of personal insolvencies and arrears,” added Alliance.
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