* Q3 net profit down 21 pct at 97.6 billion yen
* Hit by bond trading loss vs hefty gains in Q1 and Q2
* President of SMFG and core unit to step down in April
* Shares end down 1.6 pct before results; Nikkei off 1.1 pct
(Recasts, adding more information)
By Taiga Uranaka
TOKYO, Jan 28 (Reuters) - Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group's quarterly profit fall on poor demand for loans and bond trading losses signal the Japanese bank and bigger rivals MUFG and Mizuho will struggle to raise profitability unless they speed up expansions overseas.
In an economy where banks' outstanding loans have dropped for 13 straight months now, SMFG , Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Mizuho Financial Group were buoyed for much of 2010 by bond market gains. But bonds fell towards the end of last year, inflicting pain on them.
SMFG, the smallest of the big three Japanese banks, is hoping a change of managers will reenergise it. On Friday it announced the presidents of SMFG and its core banking unit, Teisuke Kitayama and Masayuki Oku, will step down in April, after six years at the helm.
Under their leadership, SMFG tried to transform itself beyond a commercial bank based in Japan, opened more branches abroad and acquired Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial Securities for 550 billion yen from Citigroup in 2009.
Their successors, Koichi Miyata and Takeshi Kunibe, will be under pressure to do more and quicker.
"The bank will likely continue to face tough situation in loan balance and interest spread, so the point is how to make up for (slow domestic lending business) with overseas growth," said Shinichi Ina, analyst at Credit Suisse in Tokyo.
With the winds of a rising yen behind them, the banks have started to expand abroad in earnest. In June last year, SMFG decided to buy a 4.5 percent stake in Indian lender Kotak Mahindra Bank for about $300 million.
And late last year, Japan's No.1 bank MUFG agreed to buy project finance loan assets worth some $5 billion from the Royal Bank of Scotland .
Incoming SMFG president Miyata struck a cautious tone, but acknowledged a changing scenario for the banks.
"While we don't have to change what the two have been doing, the situation has started changing at the same time," Miyata told a news conference announcing the top reshuffle. "Basel III will be put into reality and in Asia, there are signs of inflation and currency appreciation. We have to be sensitive to these changes and act accordingly," he added.
RESULTS
SMFG, the first of Japan's top three lenders to report results, clocked a net profit of 97.6 billion yen ($1.2 billion) for the October-December quarter, down from 124.3 billion yen in the same period a year earlier.
That compared with a forecast of 100 billion yen by Citigroup Global Markets and 88 billion yen by Credit Suisse.
The latest quarter's net profit was less than half of what the bank earned in the first and second quarters.
SMFG and rivals saw their earnings buoyed by gains from bond trading in the first half, when prices of both U.S. Treasury debt and Japanese government bonds rose sharply.
But they were unable to receive such a boost in the latest quarter amid falls in the bond market, while their core lending activities remained sluggish as households and businesses continued to be skittish about spending with the economy still weak.
SMFG's core commercial banking unit suffered 13.5 billion yen loss on trading of JGBs and other bonds in the quarter.
Net interest income, or profits from core lending activities, continued to decline in the quarter.
The bank only disclosed nine-month results, and the quarterly figures were calculated by Reuters.
For the full year to March 31, SMFG stuck to a net profit forecast of 540 billion yen, up from 271.6 billion yen the previous year but below an average estimate of 581.8 billion yen in a poll of 12 analysts by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Mizuho will announce third-quarter results on Monday while MUFG reports next Thursday.
SMFG shares gained about 9 percent last year and hit their highest level in more than eight months earlier this month.
The shares have outperformed the benchmark Nikkei average , which slipped about 3 percent last year. On Friday, SMFG closed down 1.6 percent ahead of the earnings report, while the Nikkei lost 1.1 percent. ($1=82.88 Yen) (Additional reporting by James Topham; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)