MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s Unicaja on Thursday said it booked an underlying loss of 18 million euros in the fourth quarter due to pressure from lending income and one-off charges related to its contribution to the local fund that protects bank deposits.
In a defensive deal closed at the end of July to protect itself from the pressure of ultra low interest rates and the impact from the pandemic, Unicaja bought Liberbank to create Spain’s fifth-largest bank in terms of assets.
The net profit figure did not include extraordinary items related to the merger.
In the same quarter of 2020, Unicaja reported a loss of 17 million euros when combining Liberbank’s business on a pro forma basis.
(Reporting by Jesús Aguado, editing by Inti Landauro)
