Royal Bank of Scotland's major takeover of NatWest helped push pre-tax profits at the group to £4.4 billion last year.
The group, which won the battle for NatWest after a drawn-out contest with Bank of Scotland, said the profit figure, stripping out integration costs and goodwill, was a 31 per cent increase on 1999.
Viscount Younger, chairman of RBS, said: "For the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, a decade of growth has culminated in a year of outstanding achievement.
"We have successfully completed what is the first stage in delivering to shareholders and customers the benefits which we set out in the course of our bid for NatWest.
"We have exceeded the targets we set then and we remain on course to deliver the revenue gains and cost savings we forecast."
He added buying NatWest had created a "larger group which combines scale and financial strength with an innovation and growth culture and gives us options to create additional value for shareholders".
Bottom-line pre-tax profits came in at £3.3 billion, up from £2.7 billion in 1999.
The results assumed the acquisition of NatWest took place on January 1, 1999, rather than the actual date of March 2000.
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