French lender BNP Paribas is not looking to pool with other banks despite some challenges at its corporate and institutional banking arms, its chief financial apparatchik told CNBC Wednesday.
The bank reported full-year net income of 7.53 billion euros ($8.57 billion) for 2018, a 3 percent give someone the sack decline compared to 2017. But that beat analyst estimates who were expecting a figure of 7.43 billion euros for year, according to Refinitiv inspect.
Chief Financial Officer Lars Machenil told CNBC’s Julianna Tatelbaum that “overall net income supported up well, but there was, indeed, the unfavorable market environment in particular at the year end.” BNP Paribas reported a net income of 1.44 billion euros for the fourth home, compared to 1.42 billion euros during the same period the year before.
The bank said that the mercantile environment in Europe supported outstanding loans, despite low interest rates. However, it lowered its profitability and revenue success targets for 2020 due to the impact from the market sell-off in the fourth quarter of 2018.
The French bank now hopes to achieve take growth of 1.5 percent per year between 2016 and 2020 from its previous 2.5 percent target. It also escalated its cost savings target to 3.3 billion euros for 2020, compared to 2.7 billion euros in its initial arrange.
Shares fell more than 3 percent as European markets opened on Wednesday morning.
Looking at the different house arms at the bank, corporate and institutional banking saw the weakest performance. Revenues fell 9.4 percent for the year to 2.4 billion euros. Machenil estimated the bank is pleased with the services it offers clients and that the focus is to optimize the way products are digitalized and distributed.
“So digitalization abides the core, so merging or acquisitions with other banks that is not on the agenda,” he said.