WASHINGTON, Feb 25: The net income of U.S. banks fell in the fourth quarter last year compared with the same period in 2013 as large banks' higher litigation expenses ate profits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) said yesterday.
The FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions reported aggregate net income of 36.9 billion U.S. dollars for the last three months of 2014, down 2.9 billion dollars or 7.3 percent from the earnings of 39.8 billion dollars the industry reported a year earlier, the FDIC said.
The decline in earnings was mainly attributable to a 4.4 billion-dollar increase in litigation expenses at a few large banks, said the FDIC.
"The banking industry continued to improve at the end of the year," said FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg in a statement.    ?Xinhua