Ulster Bank reports loss of £85m

The Ulster Bank has blamed bad debt for the losses

Ulster Bank reported a loss of £85m for the three months to the end of September.

The bank made an underlying profit of £59m but that was wiped out by £144m that had to be set aside for loans that the bank thinks might not be repaid.

The bank is owned by the RBS Group and was one of the group's worst performing businesses in the period.

Ulster Bank has 92 outlets in Northern Ireland and 132 outlets in the Republic of Ireland.

Ulster Bank said its "deteriorating operating results" in the three month period largely reflect increased loan losses and higher funding costs, against the backdrop of difficult economic conditions across the island of Ireland.

In the same period last year the bank made a profit of £81m.

In the nine months to September the bank has had to set aside a total of £301m to cover loans it thinks might not be repaid.

Job cuts

Most of these bad loans were made to corporate customers.

The bank said its operating costs are continuing to fall as it implements a programme of job cuts.

Chief executive Cormac McCarthy said the bank remained a "core part" of RBS, following the group's announcement earlier this week that it would sell off some businesses to ease EU competition concerns.

Overall the RBS Group, which is 70%-owned by taxpayers, reported a pre-tax loss of £2.2bn for the three months to the end of September.

It compares with a profit of £1.9bn in the same period last year.

RBS has written off another £3.3bn in bad debts and other bad investments, which is down from the £4.7bn it wrote off in the previous three months.

The bank said that conditions had improved in the past three months but that they "remain fragile".