New York / AFP Erste Group Bank AG, Austria’s biggest bank, beat analyst expectations for first-quarter profit as a sharp drop in bad debt provisions outweighed declining lending and fee revenue. Net income came in at 274.7 million euros ($316 million) in the three months through March compared with 226 million euros a year earlier, the Vienna-based bank said in …

  Madrid / AFP Spanish banks, which slimmed down after a property boom went bust in 2008, are once again closing branches and slashing jobs as their profitability is hit by stiff competition. The country’s three biggest lenders — Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank — last week all posted lower first quarter net profits, especially in Spain, which is grappling with …

  Bloomberg The mortgage upstarts that transformed the industry after the U.S. housing crash are now facing their own shakeout. Soaring expenses are squeezing profits for nonbank lenders, which have grown to almost half of the mortgage market, as new rules and stepped-up regulatory scrutiny slice into already-thin margins. The average cost to originate a home loan jumped by 18 …