Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate: UPDATE 1-Natixis Q1 net down 30 pct on own debt, Greece

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UPDATE 1-Natixis Q1 net down 30 pct on own debt, Greece May 9th 2012, 16:09 Wed May 9, 2012 12:09pm EDT (Adds background, detail) PARIS May 9 (Reuters) - French bank Natixis said on Wednesday that its quarterly earnings fell 30 percent as writedowns on Greek sovereign debt and an accounting adjustment on its own debt outweighed resilient trading revenues. Natixis, an investment bank and asset manager controlled by unlisted cooperative lender BPCE, reported first-quarter net profit declined to 339 million euros ($438.38 million) from 483 million in the year-ago period. Analysts at Societe Generale had forecast the profit at 315 million euros while Oddo Securities had forcast a lower 231 million euros. Natixis' revenue fell 4 percent to 1.669 billion euros, the bank said. The bank was rescued from near-collapse during the 2008 financial crisis by a government-backed merger of its retail cooperative parents. It has since cut a swathe through its balance sheet, getting a head-start on the race to build capital sweeping across the industry. Natixis' core Tier 1 capital ratio under Basel 2.5 methodology - a key measure of banks' ability to absorb losses - was 10.6 percent at end-March, higher than bigger rivals BNP Paribas and Societe Generale. The bank said it had signed a "commutation agreement" with U.S. bond insurer MBIA Inc, which resulted in a 4.7 billion euro reduction in the BPCE group's risk-weighted assets. Natixis had disclosed that it was dropping out of a lawsuit challenging MBIA's 2009 restructuring earlier this week. Natixis had the biggest slice of a declining debt capital markets pie in the quarter, with $16.1 billion or 15 percent of the market, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank's shares have gained 8.1 percent so far this year, outperforming the European sector, which is down 2.2 percent over the same period. That heady performance, though trimmed drastically over the last month, is a tribute to the restructuring efforts of Chairman Francois Perol, a former aide to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was drafted in three years ago to drain the lender's swamp of risky toxic assets and better integrate it with unlisted retail parent group BPCE. ($1 = 0.7733 euros) (Reporting By Christian Plumb; Editing by Lionel Laurent) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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