Allied Irish Banks reported pre-tax profits for the first half of the year of €703 million this morning, up five per cent on the same period in 2001.
AIB, hit by one of the world's biggest trading scandals in February when it revealed a rogue foreign exchange dealer at its US unit Allfirst Financial had lost $691 million, said the bank was "proving resilient in tough times".
"I think this is a very solid set of results for the half year," group financial director Gary Kennedy said.
"What's important is we have now opened a gap between income growth and costs growth."
The second largest bank in the State by market capitalisation said basic earnings per share for the first half were up eight per cent at 60.0 euro cents.
Allfirst recorded net income for the first half of the year of $61.6 million, compared with a loss of $4.3 million for the same period in 2001.
"The difficult operating environment was compounded for AIB by the Allfirst fraud," said group chief executive Michael Buckley in a statement.
"This event and its aftermath created significant challenges for our company - but these were met without losing our focus on growing the business."
AIB said profit from its core retail and commercial banking operations in the Irish Republic was up eight per cent, while profit in Britain and Northern Ireland rose 14 per cent.
Profits in the United States, which includes Allfirst and Allied Irish America, were down 25 per cent.
In its outlook the bank said market turbulence made short term conditions difficult to forecast, but repeated its target of mid single digit EPS growth for 2002.