France's leading bank BNP-Paris bas, which has an investment banking unit in Kuwait, on Thursday reported a net loss of Euros 4.317 billion (USD 5.75 billion) due to a massive US fine for "illegal" banking activities with countries under US embargo.
The bank provisioned USD 8.0 billion for payments it must make to the US Treasury as a settlement for legal action that was taken against the BNP for using US dollars in trading with Iran, Sudan and Cuba, operations that contravene US sanctions.
The bank said that excluding those exceptional payments, it would have had a net profit of Euros 1.9 billion (USD 3.0 billion) for the second quarter of this year. This is 23 percent higher than the like period in 2013.
BNP said in a press statement that the second three-month period in 2014 indicated "revenue stability in retail banking" and "good growth in investment solutions", as well as "very good performance in advisory and capital markets." The corporate investment sector was particularly strong.
Operating income was up 4.0 percent for the period and retail deposits were up 4.5 percent, the bank said.
Despite the huge US fine, BNP-Paribas said that it was very solid and had a "very large liquidity reserve" amounting to Euros 244 billion (USD 332 billion) at the end of June.