Bank of Cyprus, the Mediterranean island's largest lender, announced Tuesday losses of more than half a billion euros for the six months to June as it increased buffers for bad debt. Cyprus is recovering from a financial crisis that left a number of its top banks insolvent and forced it to negotiate a painful bailout with international creditors in 2013.
Bank of Cyprus said it had set aside another 500 million euros for bad loans in the first half of 2017. That left the lender saddled with losses after tax of 554 million euros ($667 million) for the six-month period, compared with a 56-million-euro profit in the first half of 2016.
Chief executive John Patrick Hourican said the bank was focused on reducing risk in its balance sheet. On an upbeat note, the bank noted that Cyprus's 3.5-percent economic growth rate in the second quarter of the year was the second fastest in Europe. It said the group had more than doubled its new lending in the six months to June from a year earlier, to 1.1 billion euros.
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