Lloyds expects to return to profit

London: Lloyds Banking Group, Britain’s biggest mortgage lender, said it expects to return to profit this year because of lower bad loans than forecast. The shares soared.

Lloyds “will be profitable on a combined businesses basis in 2010”, helped by “strong” earnings in the first 10 weeks of the year, the company said.

Lloyds, 41% government-owned after its bailout during the global financial crisis, posted a pretax loss of£6.3 billion (€7bn) last year on provisions for bad debt after the bank’s takeover of HBOS Plc.