NICOSIA: Bank of Cyprus, the island’s largest lender, announced Friday it had made a €31m net profit in the first quarter after seven consecutive quarterly losses.
BoC’s January-March gain compared with a loss of €103m in the previous free months, and was the first by the troubled bank since the first quarter of 2012.
Group profit after tax and before restructuring costs and discontinued operations (profit from continuing operations) was €72m, against a loss of €38m in the 2013 fourth quarter.
The cost-to-income ratio was reduced to 36 percent from
41 percent in the last three
months of 2013. Customer deposits were down 6 percent to €14.06bn from €14.97bn on December 31, 2013.
In March 2013, Cyprus clinched a €10bn loan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund to bail out its troubled economy and oversized banking system.
That included closure of the island’s second-largest bank, Laiki, and a 47.5 percent “haircut” on deposits above €100,000 at BoC. The bank has since undergone major restructuring, which included absorbing the good assets of the former Laiki Bank.
“We have made significant progress in the implementation of our restructuring plan during the first quarter of 2014, and we continue to deliver against our strategic objectives,” CEO John Patrick Hourican said in a statement.
“Loans in arrears for more than 90 days declined for the first time following sixteen consecutive quarterly increases,” he added.
AFP
