Crédit Agricole posts results by accident Crédit Agricole, France's third-biggest bank by market value, published better than expected quarterly results early on its website - apparently by accident. According to a presentation published on Monday ahead of the scheduled results announcement on Tuesday, Crédit Agricole made €1bn of pre-tax profit in the second quarter. Analysts has estimated about €778m, according to a poll from Bloomberg. Shares in the bank jumped 2.5 per cent on Monday, one of the best performers of the CAC 40, France's benchmark stock index. It was not immediately clear what time the earnings presentation had been published and whether investors had been able to trade on the information but one person familiar with the situation said they had not been approved by the board until after the market closed. At 6pm in New York no one answered the phone at Crédit Agricole's US headquarters and a recorded message informed callers that the bank's office hours were 9am to 5pm. Calls and emails to executives in Paris and New York were not immediately returned. Crédit Agricole, which has been dragged down by heavy eurozone losses over the past two years, said it was on track to make significant profits this year despite the continued fragile state of the economy. The French lender said net income in the second quarter rose to €696m from €56m in the same period last year as it continued a recovery that followed the disposal last year of its lossmaking Greek subsidiary. Crédit Agricole, France's market leader in terms of retail deposit share, suffered a €6.5bn loss in 2012, its second successive annual slump into the red, as it was hit by more than €8bn in exceptional losses, writedowns and provisions related to its Greek bank, exposure to Italian retail banking and in its Portuguese lender. It has since retrenched, shedding assets and curbing its investment bank's activities to focus more squarely on its domestic market, where it has its roots in lending to farmers and includes regional banks. Revenues in the second quarter were down slightly at €4.4bn, but expenses were also down 3 per cent at €2.9bn and the cost of risk - including provisions and losses on non-performing loans - was down 14 per cent at €680m. At group level, Crédit Agricole said it had achieved a "fully loaded" tier one equity ratio under the Basel III regulators" rule book of 10 per cent at the end of June and a leverage ratio of equity to total assets of 3.5 per cent. Both surpass new capital requirements.