November 7 (SeeNews) - Slovenian commercial bank SKB Banka, a subsidiary of France's Societe Generale, on Wednesday reported a 30% annual rise in group net profit for the first nine months of 2007 to 19.9 million euro ($29 million).
Group net interest income from January through September rose by 12% on the year to 40.4 million euro, the bank said in a statement.
In the first nine months of 2007, the SKB Banka group cut its costs by 9.0% from a year earlier. The SKB group includes the parent bank of the same name and a leasing subsidiary, SKB Leasing.
SKB Banka was the fourth-largest bank in Slovenia in terms of total assets at the end of 2005 under the latest data available. It is active in retail and corporate lending and provides capital market products to its institutional clients in cooperation with Societe Generale. It has been part of the French banking group since 2001.
Twenty-one banks operate in Slovenia, a country of two million people. The Alpine country was the first of the 10 states that entered the European Union in May 2004 to join the eurozone in 2007 as its 13th member.
($ = 0.68 euro)