By Steve Slater 1 hour, 40 minutes ago LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC's (HSBA.L) profits rose 10 percent last year as buoyant growth in Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia helped Europe's biggest bank absorb $17.2 billion in bad debts as the U.S. housing crisis deepened.Profits in Hong Kong rose 42 percent and earnings jumped 70 percent in the rest of Asia, but the bank's North American arm barely scraped a profit as past risky loans to U.S. homeowners now in trouble hit it hard.
The London-headquartered bank reported record pretax profit of $24.2 billion for 2007, up from $22.1 billion in 2006. This was below an average forecast of $24.7 billion from a Reuters Estimates poll of analysts, but results were distorted by some one-off items and did not include a $1.3 billion property gain expected by many analysts.
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