British specialist mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley took a £94m sterling write-down on its exposure to tarnished assets as it reported a 5% rise in underlying annual profit.
Britain's biggest buy-to-let mortgage provider said today that despite a credit crunch it was successfully funding its business, and that £2 billion of committed facilities would fund maturing financing into 2009.
B&B reported a 2007 underlying pre-tax profit of £351.6m, up from £336m in 2006 and ahead of an average forecast of £347.3m.
But the profits did not include a bigger-than-expected impairment on wholesale assets. B&B said it had written down the value of its assets in structured investment vehicles (SIVs) by £64.2m and marked down the value of its holdings on collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) by £30.2m.
The bank had said at the end of November that it had £125m of exposure to four SIVs and £140m of exposure to CDOs. A credit crunch has hit the value of its assets in the structured vehicles, and B&B said it would accordingly make charges to its income statement.
The UK lender said it grew residential lending balances by 27% to £39.4 billion.
