Spain\'s bailed-out Bankia: Q1 net profit more than doubles

Spain's state-owned bank Bankia, which was nationalised on 2012 to save it from collapse, said Monday its first-quarter net profit more than doubled from the same time last year. The lender said its net profit during the first three months of the year rose to 186 million euros ($257 million) from 74 million euros during the same period in 2013. Spain's fourth-biggest bank by market share, it benefited from rising interest income which offset sluggish trading volumes. Net interest income, or earnings from loans minus funding costs, jumped 36 percent to 698 million euros, while its rate of bad loans as a portion of total credit fell to 14.3 percent in the first quarter from 14.7 percent in the final quarter of last year. Bankia became the symbol of Spain's financial crisis when it lost more than 19 billion euros in 2012, which pushed Madrid to ask its eurozone partners for 41 billion euros in rescue loans to shore up the entire banking system. Spain has pumped 22.5 billion euros into the bank, which was born in 2010 from the merger of seven troubled regional savings banks. The Spanish government launched the privatisation of Bankia in February with the sale of a 7.5-percent stake for 1.3 billion euros. The sale lowered the Spanish state's holding in the bank to about 61 percent. Bankia was hit hard by the sliding value of assets it had accumulated during Spain's 10-year property bubble, which burst in 2008. After listing on the Madrid stock exchange with great fanfare in July 2011, Bankia had to be nationalised less than a year later to save it from collapse as bad loans and losses spiralled. Shares in Bankia closed down 2.18 percent at 1.437 euros.