LONDON (AP) — Royal Bank of Scotland predicted Friday that the government should be able to start selling its stake within a year, as it reported a first-quarter profit of 393 million pounds ($611 million), up from a loss of 1.5 billion a year earlier.

CEO Stephen Hester said cleanup of the troubled bank, which is 81 percent owned by the British taxpayer after it was rescued by the government in 2008, would be largely complete by the middle of 2014. That means RBS could be privatized and look “much more like a normal bank,” it said. The timing of the sale, however, remains up to the government.

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