Nigeria's Union Bank said on Wednesday it had swung to a pre-tax profit of 12.46 billion naira ($79.05 million) in the year to June, compared with 61.57 bln naira loss in the same period last year, after operations were recapitalised by a new investors.

Gross earnings however declined to 58 billion naira, compared with 67.82 billion naira in the same period last year, the bank said in a statement to the stock exchange.

Union Bank, one of the lenders rescued by the central bank in 2009, was taken over by a group of institutional investors led by African Capital Alliance, a private equity firm, for $750 million to help it recapitalise.

The recovery was due to an injection of new capital and support from the state-owned bad bank AMCON, which cleaned up its bad loan portfolio, bank chief executive Funke Osibodu said in a statement.

Source: Reuters