Emirates NBD Profit Falls 9% as Impairments Double

* username: rupertbu

Emirates NBD PJSC more than doubled provisions for bad loans to 3.63 billion dirhams ($988 million) as the biggest bank in the United Arab Emirates posted a 9 percent drop in full-year profit.

Net income fell to 3.35 billion dirhams from 3.68 billion dirhams a year earlier, the state-controlled bank said in a statement today. That missed the mean estimate of 3.52 billion dirhams of seven analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Fourth-quarter profit surged to 178 million dirhams from 15 million dirhams in the year-earlier period.

The increase in delinquencies and non-performing loans is “broadly within expected levels,” the Dubai-based bank said. It was driven by higher “specific impairments across retail and corporate portfolios” and the addition of 1.29 billion dirhams to “portfolio impairment provisions as a measure of prudence in the current environment, partly offset by lower impairments on investment and trading securities.”