RBS losses widen after income takes a tumble

LONDON, April 29 (Reuters) - Part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland reported a widening first quarter loss on Friday as lower income, restructuring costs and sluggish asset sales showed the scale of problems still facing the lender.

The bank reported an attributable loss of 968 million pounds($1.42 billion), up from 459 million pounds the year before and just higher than the 957 million pounds average estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by RBS (LSE: RBS.L - news) .

Income dropped around 13 percent year on year to 3.06 billion pounds.

The spike in losses were also driven by a one-off 1.2 billion pound payment to end the British government's priority over dividends and a 238 million pounds restructuring bill.

That bill includes the mounting costs of separating its Williams & Glyn business, which the bank said it could fail to sell off before an end-2017 regulatory deadline.

RBS is struggling to return to health amidst an unprecedented corporate restructuring and has not made an annual profit since 2007.

RBS, which was rescued in a 46 billion pound taxpayer funded bailout during the 2007-09 financial crisis, is still 73 percent owned by the British government. This quarter's performance brings the total sum lost since the bailout to around 52 billion pounds. ($1 = 0.6825 pounds) (Reporting By Andrew MacAskill and Lawrence White, editing by Sinead Cruise)