Greece's National Bank posts profit for January-September period

ATHENS (Reuters) - National Bank (NBG) , Greece's largest lender by assets, reported on Wednesday a nine-month profit for the first nine months of the year, helped by its Turkish subsidiary Finansbank as well as lower funding costs and loan-loss provisions. The group posted net earnings of 262 million euros (217 million pounds) from a loss of 2.45 billion euros in the same period last year. NBG said provisions for bad loans fell by 34 percent year-on-year to 1.24 billion euros. "NBG Group posted positive earnings in the first nine months of 2013, mainly due to the ongoing slowdown in NPL (non-performing-loans) creation in Greece and the improvement in the economic climate, which allowed for write-backs of provisions on claims and lower trading losses," NBG's Chief Executive Officer Alexandros Tourkolias said in the statement. (Reporting by Lefteris Papadimas; writing by Harry Papachristou)