ABN Amro reports loss on Greek debt write-off
Nationalised Dutch bank ABN Amro suffered a loss of €54m (£46.1m) in the third quarter as it wrote down the value of Greek corporate debt, the bank reported today..
The bank, which was bought by RBS in 2007 and then nationalized in 2010, wrote off €500m of the money owed to it by state-owned transport companies in Greece.
It represents a loss of almost a third on the €1.4bn it had lent to the companies.
“The companies’ profitability has decreased. The loans are still to be paid and redeemed but our expectation has changed,” an ABN AMRO spokesman said.
In the same period last year the bank recorded a profit of €341m.
ABN Amro does not own Greek government debt but has reported it has reduced its holdings of Italian and Belgian debt as concerns over the countries’ solvency rise.
Its exposure to Belgian bonds fell by €0.6bn to €1bn, while exposure to Italian bonds fell to just €0.3bn, a drop of €1bn.
The reductions mirror those of British banks, which are reported to have substantially cut exposure to Eurozone debt.
Despite the loss in the third quarter, ABN Amro reported a profit of €810m for the first nine months of the year.