NATWEST FIRST-QUARTER PROFIT SLIDES 27%

LONDON (Reuters) - NatWest's first-quarter profit fell by a less than expected 27%, it said on Friday, hit by a hiatus in rising central bank interest rates that drove mortgage market competition and squeezed margins across the British banking sector.

The bank said pretax operating profit for the January-March period was 1.3 billion pounds ($1.63 billion), down from 1.8 billion pounds a year earlier and just above the average of analyst forecasts at 1.2 billion pounds.

($1 = 0.7998 pounds)

(Reporting by Lawrence White; Editing by David Goodman)

2024-04-26T06:10:57Z dg43tfdfdgfd