Top US banks continue to struggle. The largest, Bank of America, has just posted lower earnings.

Second-quarter net income fell 25 percent to 2.4 billion dollars (1.7 billion euros). That was better than financial industry analysts has predicted, but the bank warned of a fresh surge in troubled loans from credit card, mortgage and business customers and has set aside billions more to cover that. Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis said tough economic conditions will continue to hurt the banks results into next year. Citibank, the third biggest US lender, which struggled to survive the financial crisis reported a second-quarter profit of 4.3 billion dollars (three billion euros). But most of that came from a one-off gain through the merger of Citibank’s brokerage arm into a new venture with Morgan Stanley. Stripping that out Citibank suffered a loss, albeit smaller than analysts had forecast.More about: Bank of America, USA

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