Greece's Eurobank says non-performing loans rose slightly in second quarter

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's third-largest lender Eurobank said on Monday its non-performing loans rose slightly in the second quarter while core income before bad debt provisions grew 1.1 percent from the previous quarter.

Providing a performance update before results due by the end of next month, the bank said loans more than 90 days past due rose to 34.3 percent of its book from 34 percent in the Jan.-to-March period.

Greece's finance ministry has extended banks' end-September deadline to report second-quarter results to end-October. Eurobank, which is 35 percent owned by Greece's bank rescue fund HFSF, did not provide figures on net income.

It said core pre-provision income excluding trading rose to 204 million euros ($228.2 million) quarter-on-quarter, while net interest income grew 1.4 percent to 378 million euros, helped by lower deposit costs and wider lending spreads.

It said funding from the European Central Bank and the Bank of Greece fell to 31.8 billion euros in September from 32.7 billion in June, with 22.2 billion euros of the total being emergency liquidity (ELA) drawn from the Greek central bank.

Deposits fell by 3.9 billion euros to 31 billion euros at the end of June, hurt by political uncertainty during the acrimonious talks with the country's international lenders.

Eurobank and the country's three other big lenders will undergo stress tests by the ECB to determine their capital shortfalls. Results of the health check are expected by the end of October.

The banks were given an extra month to report second-quarter results for reasons of financial stability in view of their upcoming recapitalisation.

(Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; editing by Adrian Croft)