UniCredit swings to loss under cost of bad loans

MILAN (AP) - Italy's largest bank by assets, UniCredit, said Thursday it swung to a loss in the fourth quarter due to higher write-downs on bad loans.

The lender reported a loss of 835 million euros, compared with a restated quarterly profit of 1.99 billion euros ($2.2billion) in the same period of 2019, which had benefited from a positive one-off tax boost.

The bank wrote down 1.6 billion euros in bad loans, an increase of nearly 80% over 921 million euros allocated in the same period last year.

Net income sank by 7.3% to 2.5 billion euros while fees and commissions grew by 5% to 1.6 billion euros.

Adjusted full-year earnings dropped 18% to 3.37 billion euros from a restated 4.1 billion euros.

The bank confirmed a revenue target of 18.2 billion euros for 2020.