Bank Audi published its quarterly unaudited financial statements this week, reporting a breakeven in profitability in the first nine months of 2020, unchanged year-on-year, as the bank allocated all profits to loss allowances (with net impairment on financial assets standing at $123.57 million by September) according to the notes related to the financial statements. This comes in the light of ambiguity of Lebanon’s financial outlook which rendered the task of assessing the impact of the prevailing crisis on the bank’s financial statements “impossible”, not to mention the acute economic and financial crisis coupled with the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic which added pressure to the group’s business and markets of presence. In details, the bank reported some 5.89% y-o-y drop in net interest income to $794.62 million coupled with some 296.56% contraction in net fee & commission income to a loss of $283.19 million and a three-fold increase in net gains on financial instruments and other operating income to $123.11 million. Consequently, net operating income fell by 5.96% y-o-y to $510.98 million by end of September 2020, down from $543.36 million a year earlier, with operating expenses contracting by just below 7% to $442.92 million. On the balance sheet front, Bank Audi’s consolidated assets narrowed by 10.85% in the first nine months of 2020 to around $35.24 billion as a result of the 7.86% drop in cash and balances with central banks to $14.16 billion, coupled with a 17.55% drop in net loans and advances to $8.53 billion. On the funding side of the balance sheet, customer deposits narrowed by 10.52% in the first nine months of 2020 to just above $26.48 billion. Consequently, the bank’s ratio of net loans to customer deposits decreased to 32.23% by end of September 2020, with its shareholders’ equity rising by 2.51% to around $3.04 billion, as the bank increased its capital in conformity with BDL intermediary circular no. 532.