Lloyds Banking Q3 Pre-tax Profit Falls; COO Juan Colombas To Retire

(RTTNews) - Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L, LYG) reported a 97 percent plunge in pre-tax profit for the third quarter from last year. The company also said its Chief Operating Officer, Juan Colombas, plans to retire from the Group in July 2020.

The company's profit before tax for the third quarter fell 97 percent to 50 million pounds from 1.82 billion pounds last year.

Statutory loss after tax for the quarter was 238 million pounds or 0.5 pence per share, compared to profit of 1.42 billion pounds or 1.8 pence per share in the previous year.

The latest quarter's results were significantly impacted by an additional 1.8 billion pounds payment protection insurance or PPI charge, driven by an unprecedented level of PPI information requests received in August.

Net income for the quarter declined 6 percent to 4.19 billion pounds from 4.45 billion pounds a year ago.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2019, Lloyds banking forecasts net interest margin of 2.88 per cent, in line with previous guidance of about 2.90 per cent. The company now expects operating costs to be less than 7.9 billion pounds, ahead of its previous guidance, and cost to income ratio to be lower than in 2018.

Lloyds Banking noted that COO Juan joined in 2011 as the Group's Chief Risk Officer. Juan joined the Board in 2013. Succession plans for Juan's current executive responsibilities will be announced by the company in due course.

In addition, LLoyds Banking announced the appointment of two Non-Executive Directors, Sarah Legg and Catherine Woods. Sarah Legg, who will join the Board on 1 December 2019, was Group Financial Controller of HSBC until earlier this year, and previously CFO for HSBC's Asia Pacific region.

Catherine Woods will join the Board on 1 March 2020 after retiring as Deputy Chairman and Senior Independent Director of Allied Irish Bank in October 2019.