Societe Generale (GLE) SA, France’s second- largest bank, said third-quarter profit fell 31 percent, hurt by a writedown on Greek sovereign debt and lower trading revenue. The company won’t pay a dividend for 2011.
Net income dropped to 622 million euros ($855 million) from 896 million euros a year earlier, the Paris-based lender said in a statement today. That missed the 764 million-euro average estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The lender took a 333 million-euro pretax writedown on its Greek sovereign debt holdings.
Societe Generale, which said in August it may miss a 6 billion-euro profit target for 2012, follows larger rival BNP Paribas SA in increasing its writedown of Greek debt to 60 percent. The two banks are trimming assets to comply with new capital rules after their stock plunged and U.S. money-market funds became reluctant to lend to them in dollars.
The firm has started to reduce the balance sheet by “disposing of a significant amount of our legacy assets at a low cost” and “halving our sovereign debt exposure” to Greece, Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal since the beginning of the year, Chief Executive Officer Frederic Oudea, 48, said in the statement.
via SocGen Q3 Profit Declines 31% on Greece – Bloomberg.
