Part state-owned Lloyds Banking group today said it made an underlying profit in the nine months to the end of September, rising by £2.551 billion to £4.426 billion.

Lloyds Banking Group,
currently part-owned by the UK
taxpayer, reported a statutory pre-tax loss of £440 million ($707 million) in the third
quarter of 2013, widening from its £151 million loss a year before, the bank
said today.

The bank’s underlying profit in the nine months to the end
of September increased by £2.551 billion to £4.426 billion, it said. For the
first nine months of this year, the bank also made a pre-tax profit of £1.694
billion, it said in a statement today.

Net interest income for the quarter was £2.761 billion, a
rise of 7 per cent from a year before; the bank logged impairments of £670
million, narrowing by 47 per cent from the impairments of a year ago.

“Profit and returns in the core business improved
substantially, with underlying profit up 20 per cent to £5,549 million, and the
return on risk-weighted assets increasing by 60 basis points to 3.17 per cent,”
Lloyds’ chief executive, António Horta-Osório, said in the statement.

At the end of the third quarter, the bank had a core Tier 1
capital ratio of 1.5 per cent, compared with 12 per cent at the end of December
2012.

The statement today gave few numbers on its wealth management arm, although it referred to St James's Place (which has reported a few days ago). 

In late May, Lloyds sold its International Private Banking business in Miami to
Spain’s Banco Sabadell for an all-cash sum of up to £8 million ($12.1
million). This move happened shortly after Lloyds said it was selling its
Geneva-based private bank to Union Bancaire Privée, and followed the
sale of its Spanish retail operations to Banco Sabadell in April.