GOOD economic conditions and cost savings helped Northern Bank raise pretax profits by 7.2 per cent to £43.2 million sterling for the six months to the end of March. The bank's bad debt charge fell from £2.8 million to £320,000, helped by strong recoveries of amounts written off in earlier periods.

Costs fell by 1.5 per cent to £46.7 million and the cost/income ratio dropped to 52 per cent from 57 per cent. Lending increased by 7.3 per cent to £2.2 billion while deposits were 15 per cent higher at £2.7 billion.

Profits after tax were 5.6 per cent higher at £28.3 million. A dividend of £18 million or 65 per cent of profits after tax was paid to parent, National Australia Bank, up from £11 million.

National Australia Bank reported a 14.1 per cent rise in group operating profits to 1.139 billion Australian dollars. Some 63 per cent of profits were generated by the Australian operations, with operations in the UK and Ireland providing the next largest contribution, at 18.9 per cent.

in competitive markets the group net interest margin fell to 3.6 per cent from 4 per cent.