'Resilient' Lloyds announces £6.3 billion loss for last year

The group, which includes Bank of Scotland and is 41 per cent owned by the taxpayer, said its performance was an improvement on the 6.7bn operating loss in 2008.

Despite the loss, it said total income rose by 12 per cent, to 23.9bn.

Today's figures come after yesterday's announcement that Royal Bank of Scotland – 84 per cent nationalised – had made losses of 3.6bn last year after a record deficit of 24.3bn in 2008.

Lloyds has had a rocky ride since it took over troubled HBOS in 2008 and inherited toxic debts from HBOS's reckless lending.

Sir Victor Blank resigned as chairman of the group in May last year amid anger from investors over the damage done to the bank by the deal.

Today's trading statement showed bad debts had risen from 14.9bn to 24bn due to the HBOS portfolios it acquired.

Lloyds said it had "delivered a resilient trading performance against the backdrop of a marked slowdown in the UK economic environment and continued challenges in the financial markets".

It reported 35bn of gross new mortgage lending and approximately 100,000 new commercial accounts.

Unlike RBS, Lloyds managed to avoid the Government's asset protection scheme, which would have seen the public stake rise above 60 per cent.

The firm instead garnered support for a record UK rights issue as part of a 22.5bn fundraising completed in November, which took the Government's stake down from 43 to 41 per cent.

Lloyds had already announced that chief executive Eric Daniels had given up a potential 2.3 million bonus in an attempt to dampen public anger ahead of the results.

He was entitled to a maximum 225 per cent of his 1.04 million salary due to his "significant individual contribution", but will forgo the bonus for the second year in a row to stave off another row over bank pay.

Earlier this week Lloyds came under fire after it announced it was to stop funding its charitable arm, the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland, ending a 25-year relationship that has seen a total of 85m donated to Scottish charities.

The foundation described the move as "an act of determined vandalism" and the Church of Scotland branded it "unacceptable and shameful".

Lloyds has also been embarrassed by news that it was the most complained about financial services company during the second half of 2009, according to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

FOS received 9,952 individual complaints about the group's Lloyds TSB business during the six months to the end of December, although only half of these complaints were upheld.