BELGRADE (Serbia), October 30 (SeeNews) – Austria’s Erste Bank reported on Friday a 78% drop in its nine-month net profit after minority interest from operations in Serbia to 1.2 million euro ($1.8 million) and a 32.8% fall in net profit from Croatian operations to 34.1 million euro.
In Serbia, the reason for the drop in net profit was the sale of a participation in the first half of 2008, reflected in the result for the first nine months of last year, Erste Bank said in a statement, commenting on its results.
The net interest income of Erste Bank Serbia decreased by an annual 9.0% to 22 million euro in January-September. Bank’s loan portfolio in Serbia was 459 million euro at the end of September, up from 337.2 million euro a year earlier. Deposits attracted by the bank totalled 355.2 million euro at the of September, slightly higher than 342.3 million euro a year ago.
The interest income of the Croatian unit, Erste Bank Croatia Group, rose by 5.7% on the year to 152.5 million euro.
“In addition to the continuing, satisfactory business trend, the first time inclusion of Montenegrin Opportunity Bank also contributed to this from the second quarter of 2009 onward,” the bank said, commenting on its results in Croatia.
Earlier this year, Erste Bank’s Croatian arm bought Montenegro's Opportunity Banka.
In Croatia, the bank's loan portfolio rose to 4.75 billion euro at the end of September from 4.04 billion euro a year ago. Deposits grew to 3.44 billion euro from 3.24 billion euro, the bank said.
Erste owns directly a 73.99% stake in the Serbian unit and a 65.3% stake in the Croatian unit, according to the group’s 2008 annual report.
"Despite weaknesses in the institutional framework, business in Central and Eastern has proved significantly more resilient than predicted by many. Despite the economic crisis the region remains very attractive to Erste Group due to stable margins, slowly rising credit demand and growing deposit inflows, particularly in the retail business," Erste Bank said.
The bank reported a 415.5 million euro nine-month net profit after minority interest in the CEE region, significantly down from 718.1 million euro in same period a year ago. In CEE, Erste has units in Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
($=0.6749 euro)
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