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By David Dolan

TOKYO, May 20 (Reuters) - Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (8306.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Japan's largest bank, posted a bigger-than-expected 71 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit on a rebound at its consumer credit unit, but forecast virtually no growth this year as it copes with a sluggish economy and more subprime losses.

The bank, with a market value of about $113 billion, said losses related to subprime investments and other securitised products totalled 123 billion yen ($1.18 billion) in the year to March 31, and said it could lose $480 million this year.

MUFG also said it was sitting on unrealised losses of 313 billion yen from a 3.3 trillion yen portfolio of securitised products.

As the value of that portfolio is down less than 10 percent, it is not required by accounting standards to book the decline as a loss.

"Subprime had a very broad effect on us," MUFG President and Chief Executive Officer Nobuo Kuroyanagi told a news briefing.

"When you start talking about the related impact, the Japanese stock market has fallen a lot and that sparked losses on our stock portfolio," he said.

While the bank has factored in subprime-related losses of about 20 billion yen for the year to March 2009, Kuroyanagi said that could go as high as 50 billion yen ($480 million).