Standard Chartered first-quarter pretax profit climbs 20 percent, beats forecasts

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Standard Chartered Plc posted on Wednesday a better- than-expected 20 percent rise in pretax profit for the first three months of the year, helped by a surge in loan demand and improvement in asset quality.

Pretax profit for the bank, which focuses on Asia, Africa and the Middle East, rose to $1.26 billion in the quarter from $1.05 billion in the same period a year ago, it said in a filing to the stock exchange.

That was above an average estimate of $1.21 billion drawn from nine analysts in a poll collated by the bank.

(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee, Emma Rumney and Lawrence White; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)