Anglo Irish Bank posted a forecast-beating rise in full-year profit today on the back of strong business lending growth and said it was confident of the group's future prospects.
Anglo Irish, the country's third largest bank by market capitalisation, said pretax profits climbed 36 percent to €685.2 million in the year to the end of September.
A median of five forecasts from analysts surveyed by Reuters had put the expected pretax profit figure at €659 million.
Anglo Irish reported a 28 percent increase in earnings per share to 73.21 cents, beating the median estimate of 71 cents and reported record lending work in progress - a key measure of the bank's future prospects - of €6 billion at year-end.
"We are confident of the bank's future prospects," Chief Executive David Drumm said in a statement. "Lending work in progress is at record levels and the outlook for our core economies remains positive".
Drumm said the 2005 results were based on record net loan growth of €9.8 billion, which brought year-end loan balances to €34.4 billion, an increase of 40 percent on a constant currency basis.