Restructured Bank of Cyprus posts €5m Q3 loss

Bank of Cyprus, the island's largest lender, announced on Thursday it had made a five million euro loss in the third quarter as it restructured after a massive debt bailout.
The bank also said it expected to resume trading on the stock exchange in mid-December after an 18-month absence since the bailout, which saw its larger depositors hit by a 47.5 percent haircut.
"Profit after tax, excluding one-off items for the third quarter, totalled 6 million euros ($7.5 million)," CEO John Patrick Hourican said in a statement.
"Taking into account one-off items related to restructuring costs, the bank incurred a loss after tax of 5 million euros ($6.25 million)," he added.
"The group’s performance is underpinned by our core Cypriot operations, supporting our efforts of shrinking to strength through the disposal of non-core operations and assets."
Earlier this month, the bank announced that it had sold its UK loan portfolio for 361 million euros ($451 million) as part of its restructuring.
The bank had already sold off its Romanian assets for 95 million euros.
In August, BoC successfully raised 1 billion euros from private investors, including US billionaire Wilbur Ross who was voted in as vice chairman last week with former Deutsche Bank boss Josef Ackermann as the new chairman.
Hourican said the bank's balance sheet was de-leveraged by 1.1 billion euros during the third quarter.
At September 30, 2014, gross loans and deposits were 24.7 billion euros and 13.3 billion euros respectively, with the net loans to deposits ratio remaining at 148 percent.
Loans in arrears for more than 90 days represented 52 percent of gross loans.
Customer deposits were down 11 percent to 13.33 billion euros from 13.80 billion on June 30, 2014.
Total income for the third quarter was 291 million euros compared to 310 million for the second quarter.
In March 2013, Cyprus clinched a 10-billion-euro ($13 billion) loan from the European Union and International Monetary Fund to bail out its troubled economy and oversized banking system.
Under the terms of the deal, the government was required to  close the island's second-largest bank, Laiki, and impose a 47.5 percent haircut on deposits above 100,000 euros at BoC.
The bank has since undergone major restructuring, which included absorbing the good assets of the former Laiki Bank.
BoC posted profits for the first two quarters of 2014 after seven straight quarterly losses.