Big Five UK banks see profits for 2012 'wiped out'

The major UK banks saw a 45% rise in core profits in 2012, but that hike was wiped out by a mix of regulation and their own mistakes, a KPMG report says.

Its performance report looks at Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Standard Chartered.
It says the banks' combined core profits last year were £31.5bn.

But this was eliminated by the "cost of past mistakes and increased creditworthiness of their own debt", the audit firm's report says.

"Dire"
 
This development meant that the major banks actually saw their statutory profits slump 40% on the previous year, at £11.7bn, KPMG added.

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