RIYADH: Samba Financial Group, Saudi Arabia's second-largest lender by market value, Wednesday posted a 7.1 percent fall in its first-quarter net profit. Samba made a net profit of SR1.12 billion ($298.7 million) in the three months to end March, compared with SR1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier, it said in a bourse statement Wednesday. Analysts expected Samba to make an average SR1.1 billion in net profit for the first quarter.
