November 6 (SeeNews) - Serbian blue-chip commercial bank Univerzal Banka said it expects to post a pre-tax profit at 420 million dinars ($6.6 million/4.44 million euro) in the second half of 2009.
In August, the bank said its pre-tax profit more than halved year-on-year to 201 million dinars in the first six months of 2009.
Revenue is forecast at 8.68 billion dinars in the six months to December 2009 with costs at 8.26 billion dinars, the bank said in a statement to the Belgrade Stock Exchange (BELEX) on Thursday.
The lender said it plans to end the year with assets totalling 28.69 billion dinars compared to 25.33 billion dinars at the end of 2008.
Univerzal Banka was Serbia’s 19th largest bank in terms of assets at the end of September with total assets of 28.3 billion dinars.
There were 34 banks active in Serbia in 2008. The top three by assets among them were the Belgrade-based units of Italy’s Banca Intesa and Austria’s Raiffeisenbank, and Komercijalna Banka AD Beograd.
Univerzal Banka shares rose 3.06% to 7,652 dinars on Friday.
(1 euro=93.9054 Serbian dinars)
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