HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s largest bank, said first-quarter profit rose 26 percent, beating analyst estimates, helped by increased income at its securities unit and a decline in U.S. loan losses, Bloomberg reports.

Pretax profit, excluding losses on the revaluation of HSBC’s own debt, rose to $6.8 billion from $5.4 billion in the year-earlier period, the London-based bank said in a statement today. That beat the $5.9 billion median estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Investment-banking revenue climbed 12 percent, led by the lender’s rates and foreign-exchange units.

“Markets remain volatile with high levels of debt and regulatory and political uncertainty in developed economies, contrasting with an encouraging outlook in faster-growing markets,” Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver said in the statement. “Our performance in April has been satisfactory.”

Impairments for bad loans in the U.S. fell by about $500 million from the year-earlier period, HSBC said on May 8. The lender, which operates in about 85 countries, has set aside more than $65 billion for souring loans in North America following its 2003 purchase of Household International Inc., which lent to U.S. customers with subprime credit.

“The first quarter has been an impairments story for HSBC,” said Chirantan Barua, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein Research in London who has an outperform rating on HSBC. “if you look at the U.S. subprime book, it’s holding up.”

HSBC, which plans to cut 30,000 jobs by the end of next year, is selling assets as the euro-area debt crisis saps profit and regulators demand bigger capital buffers. Gulliver has announced about $6 billion of asset sales since last May as the bank sheds jobs and redeploys capital in faster-growing markets.

HSBC in March agreed to buy $769 million of Lloyds Banking Group Plc’s consumer and commercial-banking assets in the United Arab Emirates to bolster its presence in the Middle East. The unit has about 8,800 customers. The banks didn’t disclose the price of the deal.