EXCLUSIVE-UPDATE 1-Postbank Sees 1 Bln Eur Pretax Profit in 2007

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Postbank (DPBGn.DE) expects to make pretax profit of slightly over 1 billion euros ($1.45 billion) in 2007, despite writedowns on subprime investments and one-off costs, Postbank's chief financial officer told Reuters on Monday.

"We are optimistic that we will be able to show a pretax profit of a bit over 1 billion euros for the first time, despite the drag from extraordinary factors," Marc Hess said.

"We are very pleased with the 2007 financial year," he said, adding that the figures were preliminary.

His comments are in line with market expectations for 2007 pretax profit of 1.04 billion euros, according to Reuters Estimates.

Germany's biggest retail bank also expects subprime writedowns in the fourth quarter to be slightly better than the 61 million euros it wrote down in the third quarter, he said.

Postbank held about 800 million euros in collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) with subprime exposure at the end of September.

In addition, an efficiency program at the lender is expected to cost around 110 million euros for the full year 2007, of which about 70 million euros worth was booked through the end of September, he said.

Postbank's share pared losses to close down 7.9 percent at 52.48 euros, compared with a 7.2 percent drop in the blue-chip DAX .GDAXI index and a 6.8 percent decline among European banking shares .SX7P.

(Editing by Will Waterman)