SYDNEY – National Australia Bank Ltd. announced on Thursday its annual profit had slumped 94 percent to 352 million Australian dollars ($269 million) due to sales of its troubled British banking and life insurance businesses.
One of Australia's largest banks demerged the poorly performing Clydesdale Group and sold an 80 percent stake in its life insurance business NAB Wealth to Japan's largest insurer Nippon Life in the latest fiscal year that ended June 30.
The latest result was 94.4 percent down from the AU$6.34 billion profit in 2014-15, which was 19.7 percent up on the previous year.
The bank's preferred performance measure, cash earnings, increased 4.2 percent to AU$6.48 billion in the latest year.
The bank's chief executive Andrew Thorburn described the latest period as a "milestone year" because of the two divestments.
"NAB moves into 2017 as reshaped business — stronger, simpler and focused on helping our customers in Australia and New Zealand," Thorburn said in a statement.
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