UniCredit profit falls 40 percent in 'challenging' quarter

MILAN (Reuters) - Net profit at UniCredit , Italy's No.1 bank by assets, fell 40 percent in the third quarter to 204 million euros ($274 million), buoyed by the sale of insurance operations in Turkey.

Revenues fell 8.5 percent and fees also dropped in what CEO Federico Ghizzoni said in a statement was a "particularly challenging third quarter, not only due to seasonality".

The net profit, which compared with 335 million euros in the same quarter last year, was bang in line with an analyst consensus of 203 million euros, posted on the bank's website.

UniCredit said in a statement it had made a net capital gain of 181 million euros from the sale of Turkish insurance business Yapi Kredi.

The bank said that sale and "a very strong" contribution from its central and eastern European businesses had helped results, while its Italian commercial banking operations had posted a loss of 165 million euros in the quarter.

Highlighting the challenges it faces in its recession-hit home country, UniCredit said that out of 1.6 billion euros of loan loss provisions booked in the three months to September, 1.1 billion euros were in Italy.

However, Ghizzoni reiterated the bank had started to see "some initial encouraging signs of recovery" in the euro zone's third biggest economy.

Despite the weak operating trends, UniCredit - the first top Italian lender to publish third-quarter results this week - managed to strengthen its capital base.

Its Basel III-compliant capital ratio stood at 9.83 percent from 9.72 percent at the end of June.

(Reporting by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Louise Ireland and Stephen Jewkes)