The French-Belgian bank Dexia, rescued with government support, reported yesterday a net loss of €11.6bn ($15.4bn) for 2011, marking a record for French banks. This huge figure is not, however, the biggest loss reported by a French company, coming way behind Vivendi which lost €23.3bn and France Telecom which lost €20.7bn in 2002 as a result of the Internet bubble.
The bank is a leading casualty in Europe of the financial and then eurozone debt crises and risk aversion on the interbank market.
The bank was strangled by its high dependency on refinancing on the capital markets and by huge holdings of bonds, including a large amount of Greek government bonds.
Dexia was forced to turn to central banks for funds, and its borrowings from this source rose by €17bn between the end of June and the end of December last year. At the end of the year, the total of its loans from central banks was €31bn, the statement issued yesterday showed.

RBS
State-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland yesterday said its net losses widened to almost £2bn in 2011, hit by the Greek debt crisis and compensation costs linked to insurance mis-selling.
RBS, 82% owned by the British government after a massive bailout in the wake of the financial crisis, unveiled losses after tax of £1.99bn (€2.35bn, $3.12bn) for 2011, up from £1.12bn in 2010.
Pre-tax losses surged 92%, RBS added in an official earnings statement. RBS paid staff a total bonus pot of £785mn, down 43% compared with 2010. This included £390mn for its 17,000 investment banking staff, down 58%.

Credit Agricole
Credit Agricole reported yesterday a net loss of €1.47bn ($1.95bn) last year, sending its share price plunging amid heavy falls for financial stocks.
The bank put its poor result down to the Greek debt crisis, costs of a restructuring plan and asset write-down charges, but investors also reacted to news that the bank would not pay shareholders a dividend for 2011.
Credit Agricole did not give an outlook for 2012.
In 2010, the bank, France’s third-biggest by market capitalisation, had posted a net profit of €1.26bn.
The latest result missed an average analyst forecast gathered by AFP of a more modest loss of €856mn.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, Credit Agricole reported a loss of €3.1bn, worse than the comparable loss of €328mn 12 months earlier.

Commerzbank
Commerzbank, Germany’s second-biggest bank, said yesterday that the eurozone debt crisis and losses on its investments in Greece slashed profits in half in 2011.
The bank also announced new plans to beef up its core capital by more than €1bn ($1.3bn).
Commerzbank said bottom-line net profit fell by 55.4% to €638mn in 2011 and operating profit fell even more sharply, plunging 63.4% to €507mn.
“2011 was characterised for Commerzbank by a successful first six months and difficult market conditions in the second half of the year,” said chief executive Martin Blessing.
Nevertheless, the bank insisted it was satisfied that “despite the massive charges resulting from the European sovereign debt crisis, we attained a net profit” overall.

BAT
British American Tobacco , the world’s second-biggest cigarette maker, increased its share buyback to £1.25bn ($2bn) after it raised prices and saw strong growth in emerging markets to help boost full-year earnings.
The London-based maker of Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike and Pall Mall cigarettes bought back €750mn of shares in 2011 and has raised its 2012 programme, confident it has growth ahead and firepower for acquisitions.
BAT said it gained from its good spread of businesses with 60% of profit and 75% of volume coming from emerging markets. In mature Western Europe, where it cut costs as well as raising prices, profit rose 10%.
The group posted a rise of 11% in 2011 adjusted diluted earnings per share to 194.6 pence, compared with a Thomson Reuters poll forecast for 193.9 pence and a BAT-compiled consensus of 194.3 pence.
The full-year dividend, set at 65% of earnings, also rose 11% to 126.5 pence.

Allianz
German insurance giant Allianz said yesterday natural catastrophes and losses on its investments in Greece slashed its bottom-line in half in 2011.
Allianz said in a statement it had booked net profit of €2.545bn ($3.4bn) last year, a drop of 49.6% from a year earlier.
In the fourth quarter alone, net profit fell by 56.6% to €492mn.
Operating profit fell by 4.6% to €7.866bn and revenues were down 2.7% at €106.5bn, the statement said.
, Allianz said it would pay an unchanged dividend of €4.50 per share.

Target, Kohl
Target Corp posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit despite a holiday season marked by heavy discounting, while Kohl’s Corp, hit by shoppers’ resistance to higher prices, issued a 2012 profit that missed Wall Street forecasts.
Target earned $1.45 per share in the fiscal fourth quarter, topping analysts’ average forecast by 5¢, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Kohl’s said it would earn $4.75 per share in fiscal 2012, below the $4.95 that Wall Street analysts were projecting. The company’s shares were down 3.2% in premarket trading.
Target earned $981mn, or $1.45 per share, in the fiscal fourth quarter, compared with $1.04bn, or $1.45, a year earlier.

Swiss Re
Swiss Re tripled its profit in 2011 despite unusually severe natural disasters, and said it was raising its dividend and the current year had started well with a rise in prices. Swiss Re, the world’s second-biggest reinsurer by market capitalisation, said renewal prices with insurance company clients had, on average, risen 4% in January, compared with the 2% seen by larger rival Munich Re.
Swiss Re recorded a full-year profit of $ 2.63bn, compared with an estimate of $1.79bn in a Reuters poll and after an $863mn profit in 2010.

HP profit plummets
Hewlett-Packard Co’s earnings fell nearly 44% and the world’s No 1 computer maker forecast a second-quarter profit below Wall Street estimates as it struggles with weak sales of PCs and printers.
The storied Silicon Valley company, which has been trying to move past the internal upheaval that marked 2011, posted quarterly sales declines in three of its key units: personal computers, printers and enterprise equipment.
Chief executive Meg Whitman, a veteran Silicon Valley executive who took the top job last September after the firing of Leo Apotheker, has been trying to turn around HP’s sprawling businesses. On Wednesday, she pleaded for a little patience.
Fiscal first-quarter revenue fell 7% to $30bn, slightly below Wall Street’s consensus estimate.
Revenue from its bread-and-better printing group - which Whitman called the “lifeblood” of the company on Wednesday - fell 7%, hurt by weak consumer demand as the US economy continued to struggle.
On Wednesday, HP reported net income of $1.47bn for the fiscal first quarter, or 73¢ a share, down from $2.6bn, or $1.17 a share, a year earlier.