(BFM Stock Exchange) – European banks have successfully completed the results season, revealing robust performance on the first part of the 2025 financial year. Some of them took advantage of this meeting with the market to raise their forecasts.

European banks have aligned very good performances on the first part of the year, pushing them to revise their annual forecasts upwards, or even to consider swallowing competitors, with more or less success.

“The retail bank which suffered, in particular for French banks (…) is in the process of catching up”, while the economic situation “draws certain trades upwards: the wholesale bank, the financing and investment bank in particular”, but also “asset management and the management of fortune”, underlined to AFP Matthieu PiErt, consultant at Eurogroup Consulting.

Best first half since 2007 for Deutsche Bank

In the first half, the Spanish banks Banco Santander and BBVA each released a record profit, respectively 6.83 billion euros (+13%) and 5.45 billion euros (+9%).

The first German private bank Deutsche Bank has made its best first half since 2007 at 1.48 billion euros. The largest bank in Italy, InteSa Sanpaolo, published a net profit of 2.6 billion euros in the second quarter, a little more than expected by analysts.

In the second quarter, the French Crédit Agricole and Société Générale saw their net profit jump more than 30% to 2.64 billion and 1.4 billion euros respectively, when the Swiss giant UBS doubled its net profit to 2.4 billion dollars (2 billion euros).

“We have in all the forecasts which indicate performances on the full year better than expected, even though there is a high level of uncertainty accompanied by elements like the 15% of prices (customs, editor’s note) which are likely to penalize growth,” said Olivier Panis, analyst of the Moody’s rating agency.

The Spanish Bank BBVA, and the French Société Générale and BNP Paribas, whose net profit is down in the second quarter to 3.26 billion euros, took advantage of the publication of their results to raise their forecasts for the year.

Rapprochement movements

The first semester 2025 also saw numerous proceeding movements between European banking players.

While banking networks accumulate liquidity, in a context of gloomy economic growth, “external growth, it is a means of using the capital that is not used for organic growth”, explains Olivier Panis, believing that “there will be even more consolidations”.

Some marriages are made: the Portuguese bank Novo Banco was thus bought by the French BPCE, or the German bank OLB acquired by Crédit Mutuel. But some union projects are less obvious.

The fourth Bank of Spain, Sabadell, targeted for more than a year by a hostile OPA of BBVA, still hopes to derail the acquisition project presented by its competitor from the Basque Country.

The European Commission announced in mid-July that it has warned the Spanish government of risk of European rules, after the conditions it has enacted to the buyout launched by BBVA on Sabadell. “The single market cannot work whether commercial transactions are subject to government validation,” said a spokesperson for the Commission.

The Italian Unicredit posted a record net profit on Wednesday during the second quarter, at 3.3 billion euros, the day after her decision to withdraw her buyout on her competitor Banco BPM.

The second Italian bank explained this decision by using “Golden Power” by the Italian government, a provision which allows it to set certain restrictive conditions in control in strategic sectors, such as the banking sector, in particular those to maintain the level of loans granted in Italy for a certain period, and to cease all activity in Russia.

“In a European framework which is not yet a single banking market”, buying a division rather than merging with another bank “always remains easier and perhaps gives rise to less political controversies, reactions from banks,” recalls Olivier Panis.

(With AFP)