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Article: National Australia Bank profit drops 0.9 percent
- Article from:
- AP Worldstream
- Article date:
- October 21, 2008
- Author:
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National Australia Bank, the country's largest by assets, reported a 1 percent fall in annual profit and sharply rising levels of bad debts Tuesday as it absorbed blows from the global financial crisis and warned that times could get tougher still.
NAB is the first of the handful of big banks that underpin Australia's financial sector to report full-year earnings for 2008 _ data that is being closely scrutinized by investors for signs of how international market turmoil and the global economic slowdown will affect them.
Australia's banking system is considered much stronger than the teetering U.S. system, with stronger regulation and only relatively small exposures to ...