Dexia posts 431 mln euros quarterly loss

PARIS - Agence France-Presse

Dexia bank flags fly in front of the Dexia headquarters in the center of Brussels.

The French-Belgian bank Dexia, which was rescued with government support and has put its Turkey unit on sale to overcome financial woes, reported yesterday a net loss of 431 million euros ($559 million) for the first quarter of 2012.

The bank said the loss came from writedown on stakes in Austrian bank Kommunalkredit Austria and local authority lending unit Dexia Municipal Agency, to be taken over by a French postal bank and investment fund.

The bank took a 128-million-euro charge before taxes on guarantees given to the governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg as part of Dexia’s dismantlement, decided last year.
The bank is a leading casualty in Europe of the financial and then eurozone debt crises and risk aversion on the interbank market.

Last year, the governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg provided guarantees worth 90 billion euros to ensure that 

The consolidated net profits of Dexia’s DenizBank, the Turkey unit, for the first quarter fell 11.3 percent to 179.7 million Turkish Liras, from 202.6 million liras in the same period last year according to a statement by the lender yesterday. The bank’s net profits were up 21 percent compared with the previous quarter.