YEREVAN, October 27. / ARKA /. The retained earnings of 21 commercial banks operating in Armenia stood at 28.2 billion drams on September 30, 2014, down from 35.3 billion drams from the year earlier, falling by 20.12%, according to ARKA news agency’s “Banks of Armenia" financial and economic bulletin which shows the banks’ performance in the third quarter 2014.

It is noteworthy that 15 of the 21 banks showed profits in the reporting period of time. The remaining six banks suffered 3.6 billion drams in losses. Five leading banks accounted for 75% of the overall net profits of all the banks.

The leading bank by size of net profit in the third quarter was HSBC Bank Armenia, which earned about 5.6 billion drams (the figure represented, however, a decline of 12.34% when compared to the same period of 2013. By the way, in terms of profit HSBC Bank Armenia has been ahead of other banks in the last four years, starting from 2010.

Ameriabank with 5.1 billion drams was second. The figure was 11.22% higher from the third quarter of 2013. Ardshininvestbank was third, earning 4 billion drams in net profit (a decline of 2% year-on-year).

It was followed by Inecobank with 3.5 billion drams in net profit, down 3.19% from the year earlier.
Armbusinessbank was fifth with a net profit of 3 billion drams, an increase of 83.74% year-on-year.

The total assets of all 21 banks during the reporting period amounted to about 2.956 trillion drams (an increase of 0.6% compared to the beginning of the year). Their obligations declined by 0.52% to over 2.456 trillion drams and their total capital grew by 6.45% to 499.3 billion drams. ($ 1 - 408.38 drams). -0-