(11 November 2010 – Europe) French Bank Credit Agricole has announced better-than-predicted third quarter results.France’s third largest bank by market capitalisation announced Wednesday that its net profit had more than doubled to €742 million (A$1.02 billion), better than analysts’ expectations of around €675 million.
As a result of the pumped up profits, the bank has said that it will not need to raise fresh cash to meet new international capital adequacy regulations.
The bank said an 18 percent decrease in loan loss provisions to €973 million largely affected the results.
Credit Agricole said that the banking group would not need to raise cash to meet new rules calling for lenders to have core, easily available capital equal to seven percent of their total risk assets by 2018.