Greece’s second largest lender posts Q1 profit
(30 May 2016 – Greece) National Bank of Greece (NBG), the country's second-largest lender, turned a profit in the first quarter of the year and expects to remain profitable for the remainder of 2016, it announced last week.
NBG said that its group net income, before one-off items, reached €87 million (A$135 million), versus a loss of €159 million in the same period a year earlier. After minorities and discontinued operations, it showed a loss of €10 million, unchanged from the previous year.
The country’s banks have been heavily impacted by the ongoing economic crisis, needing three government-backed recapitalisation programs to stay solvent. Currently they are wrestling with some €100 billion of bad loans on their books as the economy remains in recession and unemployment rates remain around 25 percent.
"The positive economic climate and the solid set of first-quarter results signal that the conditions for a profitable 2016 are in place, which add force to our restructuring momentum," the bank’s CEO Leonidas Fragkiadakis said in a statement.
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