Bank of Beirut published its year 2019 audited financial statements this week conveying a net after tax loss of $122.09 million, down from a $206.73 million profit during the year 2018. In details, net interest income increased by 76.11% y-o-y to $526.23 million with net commission & fee income rising by 8.06% to $100.81 million. This, however, was offset by the 122.27% annual drop in net gains on financial instruments & other operating income to a loss of $16.83 million, coupled with an increase in provisions for expected credit losses to $507.96 million, leading to a 79.12% annual contraction in the bank’s net operating income to $96.87 million. The bank managed, however, to cut its total operating expenses by 7.44% y-o-y to $203.50 million during the year 2019. On the balance sheet front, Bank of Beirut’s total assets narrowed by 10.94% during the year 2019 to just above $16.30 billion, mainly owing to some 13.68% drop in net loans & advances to about $4.97 billion coupled with a 25.92% contraction in debt instruments at amortized cost to $5.08 billion outweighing some 29.51% hike in cash and placements with central banks to $6.13 billion. Customer deposits at Bank of Beirut also fell by 8.38% in 2019 to $12.29 billion, with the ratio of net loans to customer deposits falling to 40.45%, from 42.93% at end of 2018. On the capitalization front, the bank’s shareholders’ equity fell by 32.92% to $1.58 billion as at end of year 2019. Bank of Beirut unveiled in a footnote that it stopped the consolidation of the financial statements of investment funds as per IAS 10.