Big Five UK banks see profits for 2012 'wiped out'

The major UK banks saw a 45% rise in core profits in 2012, but that hike was wiped out by a mix of regulation and their own mistakes, a KPMG report says.

Its performance report looks at Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS and Standard Chartered.

It says the banks' combined core profits last year were £31.5bn.

But this was eliminated by the "cost of past mistakes and increased creditworthiness of their own debt", the audit firm's report says.