British bank Lloyds took a hit of over €4 billion from bad Irish debts according to results.
The banking group which owned Bank of Scotland Ireland said margins will not improve this year.
The bank is part-nationalised by the UK government.
However the chief executive said although Ireland will remain difficult he expects bad debts here to improve this year.
“The Irish economy remains at very low levels. We view them as sort of bouncing along the bottom, not getting worse but certainly not improving” Eric Daniels said.
“We would expect for 2011 that we’re going to see very modest growth” he added.
