BNP Paribas Fourth-Quarter Profit Falls 42% on Credit Turmoil

BNP Paribas Fourth-Quarter Profit Falls 42% on Credit Turmoil

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- BNP Paribas SA, France's largest bank, said fourth-quarter profit fell 42 percent, hurt by 589 million euros ($871 million) of costs linked to credit market turbulence.

Net income fell to about 1 billion euros in the fourth quarter from 1.72 billion euros a year earlier, the bank said in an e-mailed statement today. That fell short of the 1.3 billion- euro mean estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. For the full year, BNP's profit rose 7 percent to 7.8 billion euros, the largest ever earned by a French bank in a year.

BNP's markdown in the final quarter adds to the $133 billion of credit losses announced by banks since the start of last year. It follows rival Societe Generale SA's disclosure last week that a rogue trader caused a 4.9 billion-euro trading loss, the largest in banking history.

``Of all the French banks we follow, we prefer BNP Paribas, whose corporate and investment bank operations appear to be showing the greatest resistance to the current market turmoil,'' Jean-Pierre Lambert, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Ltd., wrote in a comment to clients.

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