Bank of Queensland on Thursday attempted to sell a story of a 29 per cent increase in "normalised" profit for the half year to February 2009, yet one that still demanded a cut in the dividend of 26 per cent.A raft of one-off items in this and prior periods leave plenty of room for interpretation over how soundly BOQ is travelling, but on balance, not all that well.The hunt for $50 million in cost savings from a $350 million cost base, while admirable in the name of productivity and, who knows, lower prices to customers, suggests a degree of alarm at the bank over the sustainability of its earnings even after reporting deposit growth over 12 months of 25 per cent but asset growth of half that.If one accepts the BOQ version of its "cash underlying profit" for the half of $138.9 million then the return on assets fell to 0.85 per cent in the February 2009 half from    0.98 per cent six months earlier, so even on the bank's terms profit is in decline. Comparisons for the half year before that are complicated by the takeover of Home Building Society.On a statutory basis BOQ's net profit fell to $46.3 million in the latest half from $77 million six months earlier and from $61.7 million 12 months earlier.The bank wants stakeholders to overlook plenty of costs for the purpose of reporting a favourable, normalised profit. Some may have merit such as faster amortisation of intangibles and integration costs on Home Building Society (taken over in December 2007).Some are a crock, such as the $19 million of "restructuring expenses", more than a third of which are straight out loan losses and of a controversial kind. There's more on those loan losses, rolled up under the label of network restructuring, in the next article.Aside from looking for - rather than having tangible plans to achieve - a reduction of one seventh in the cost base of the bank, the overriding theme for BOQ's chief executive and board at present is the identification of a buyer of strategic partner for the bank. The fallback option is that BOQ endeavours to roll up minor deposit taking entities.The bank did not release anything fresh in relation to the search for a strategic partner in its investor briefing on Thurday, though in one media interview the bank's chief executive, David Liddy, suggested he was spending 95 per cent of his time on the task.Meanwhile BOQ last week implemented management changes to reflect the planned integration of the retail bank and the consumer bank.Robert Hines got the axe and left the bank on Friday. Hines ran the retail network and before that was chief financial officer.David Marshall, formerly head of the business bank, is the executive now running the combined banking business.