Crédit Agricole confirms €2.68bn writedown Crédit Agricole of France is to take a €2.68bn goodwill writedown as Europe's leading banks continue to pay a heavy price for poorly timed deals struck before the 2008 financial crisis. The charge comes two weeks after the European Union's markets watchdog told companies and their accountants that they would be named publicly if they failed to properly write down goodwill impairments in their latest financial results. Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, chief executive of BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole's bigger French rival, told French lawmakers this week that: "Goodwill is particularly harmful in the banking industry." Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest lender, said on Thursday it was taking a €1.9bn writedown on goodwill and other intangible assets. Crédit Agricole, France's third-largest bank by market value, has included a €923m writedown on its consumer finance sector, while a further €852m writedown of its Italian retail banking arm has been added to the €572m goodwill impairment - mostly on its Italian consumer-credit business - it announced in the third quarter. However, its shares rose 2 per cent to €7.42 in early Paris trading, which analysts said reflected an increasing confidence among investors in the robustness of the European banking sector despite the need for more housecleaning. Crédit Agricole also included a €267m writedown on its 20 per cent stake in Banco Espirito Santo, Portugal's biggest publicly traded bank, in the announcement on Friday. The bank was already in the red for the nine months to the end of September 2012, having made a net loss of €2.5bn during the period, mainly due to Emporiki, its lossmaking Greek bank, which it sold in October for €1 to Alpha Bank of Greece, incurring a €1.8bn loss. Crédit Agricole, controlled by 39 French regional banks, is trying to retreat from an era of ill-fated deals in southern Europe to refocus on its domestic business. In November it reported a worse-than-expected third-quarter loss of €2.85bn, reflecting the weighty price paid for its exit from Greece and exposure to other heavily indebted eurozone countries, including Italy and Spain. The goodwill charges will have no impact on solvency or liquidity ratios, the bank said, although a series of other accounting writedowns could have a marginal impact on regulatory ratios. Those include an €850m hit from the revaluation of its own debt on quarterly revenues. Crédit Agricole said it would also take a €366m writedown on the goodwill of its 50 per cent stake in Newedge, the broker. Société Générale, its joint venture partner in Newedge, is also planning a €384m writedown on the goodwill of Newedge. With Crédit Agricole's goodwill among the highest in the sector, standing at €17bn in June, analysts had predicted a move to "kitchen-sink" the accounts - that is include as many writedowns as possible - in the fourth quarter given the extent of restructuring this year to help conform to new regulatory rules. Its shares are up 15 per cent so far this year, compared with an 8.5 per cent gain for the European banking sector. Additional reporting by Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Paris