Audi writes off $191 million
in Syria, Sudan investments

Positive growth in all Q3 indicators

Bank Audi announced that it has written off its investments in Syria and Sudan for an amount of $191 million. In its third quarter results report, the bank declared a 15.2 percent growth in profits over the same period of last year, to $350 million.

The bank’s other indicators were all positive, deriving almost half its operations from entities abroad.

The bank announced the following results:
$45.3 billion of assets, of which 45 percent is from entities abroad
$37.0 billion of customers’ deposits, of which 42 percent is from entities abroad
$18.8 billion of loans to customers, of which 66 percent is from entities abroad
$3.7 billion of shareholders’ equity, of which 89 percent is of core common shareholders’ equity
$350 million of net profits in the first nine months of 2016, growing 15.2 percent relative to the corresponding period of 2015, and of which 44 percent is from entities abroad

The bank said in a statement: “Most real sector indicators managed to display a positive growth this year.”

It said that the economy, which started the year with noticeable improvement in the first quarter, has lost some steam in the second quarter, and in the third quarter of the year.

According to the Central Bank (BDL), the economy is expected to grow by 1.5 to two percent in real terms in 2016. The financial sector reported an improvement in activity on the back of the recent BDL financial engineering operations that resulted in a 37 percent growth in financial inflows over the first eight months of the year, generating a surplus in the balance of payments of $366 million, against a deficit of $1.65 billion in the first eight months of 2015.