Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ quarterly profit drops 63.5%

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's biggest bank, said Tuesday its quarterly net profit slumped 63.5 percent from a year earlier. The lender posted a net profit of 182.9 billion yen ($2.3 billion) for the three months to June, down from 500.6 billion yen a year ago, while revenue fell 17.7 percent to 1.20 trillion yen. The year-over-year profit decline was mainly due to a one-time gain that the bank recorded last year from the conversion of its Morgan Stanley preferred share holdings into common shares. The Japanese lender became a major investor after offering the Wall Street giant a $9.0 billion lifeline following the global financial crisis in 2008. On Tuesday, Mitsubishi UFJ also said its bad-loan ratio rose in the quarter while it saw a steep decline in the value of its shareholdings as investors sold off Japanese equities in the quarter. The bank left unchanged its earnings forecast for the full fiscal year through March 2013, expecting a net profit of 670 billion yen.