Greek Alpha Bank 9M net falls 3.6 pct, below forecasts

Greece's third largest lender Alpha Bank reported a slight decline in net profit in the first nine months of the year and said it was suspending its expansion in eastern Europe due to the world crisis.
Alpha said it was taking steps to weather the credit crunch, which has left most major Greek lenders largely unaffected so far, and would take advantage of the Greek government's bank support plan, boosting its liquidity by 5 billion euros.
"We are taking concrete steps to prepare ourselves for the deteriorating economic environment," Alpha Bank's Managing Director Dimitris Mantzounis said in a statement. "We are building loan loss reserves pre-emptively in anticipation of weakening credit conditions."
Nine-month net profit fell 3.6 percent year-on-year to 568 million euros ($731 million) as loan growth slowed and trading income weakened, the bank said. Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting nine-month net profit of 579.8 million euros.
But nine-month net interest income rose by a better-than-expected 16.6 percent to 1.4 billion euros, exceeding an everage estimate of 1.36 billion.
"Loan and deposits growth in the nine-month period were quite solid and above our expectations," said Natasa Roumantzi, analyst at Piraeus Securities. "We are expecting slower credit expansion in the fourth quarter."
The bank was the first major lender to declare it would participate in the government's 28 billion euro bailout plan, which is mostly aimed at injecting funds into the slowing Greek economy.
"We expect that this will be providing in total aproximately 5 billion euros of liquidity to Alpha Bank, of which about 800 million will be capital," said CFO Marinos Yannopoulos.
Alpha has operations in Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania and Cyprus. The group said pre-tax profit from its southeastern Europe operations rose by 44 percent to 119 million euros.