Société Générale expects bad loan provisions to be significantly lower this year, after a favourable first quarter, with the best result in years for the international banking division of the French bank. This was shown on Thursday by figures from the French bank. The net profit of 814 million euros can be compared to the loss of 326 million a year earlier, when the bank had to make substantial provisions on loans and stock trading revenues plummeted. The figure is much better than the profit of 228 million euros that analysts expected on average. Revenue increased by 21 percent to 6.25 billion euros. This too was above the expectations of analysts of € 5.92 billion. Provisions for non-performing loans fell by 66 percent at the French banking giant, to 276 million euros. On Thursday, ING also reported a similar decrease in problem loans during the quarter. The branch of the investment bank that deals with the issuance of shares of companies and trading in them, had the best quarter since 2015. SocGen calculates between 30 and 35 basis points of the loan book for risk costs, which would be about half of the 64 basis points a year earlier.
