LONDON, May 1 (Reuters) - Britain's biggest retail bankLloyds Banking Group reported a 21 percent rise inunderlying pretax profit for the first quarter, reflecting animproved margin and lower losses for bad debts.
The state-backed lender said on Friday it made a pretaxprofit before one-off items of 2.2 billion pounds ($3.4 billion)for the three months to the end of March, at the top end of expectations, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.
The bank said losses from bad debts fell 59 percent from ayear ago to 177 million pounds and margins were better thanexpected, and it should exceed previous guidance on its netinterest margin this year.($1 = 0.6517 pounds) (Reporting by Steve Slater; Editing by Carolyn Cohn)