French banking giant BNP Paribas on Wednesday reported a net profit of 1.5 billion euros (2.0 billion dollars) in the first quarter of the year, nearly double analysts’ expectations.

“We mustn’t relax,” however, said BNP Paribas’s director Baudoin Prot. “Calm has not entirely returned to the markets and the recession is hitting several countries” where the bank operates, he said.

The outcome was 21 percent lower than in the corresponding period last year, but the price of shares in the bank showed a strong gain of 7.38 percent in afternoon trading.

The profit reported for the first quarter of this year was equivalent to half of the profit for the whole of last year, which was 3.0 billion euros.

BNP Paribas reported a loss in the last quarter of 2008 when the effects of the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers accelerated the global financial crisis and cut rapidly into corporate performances.

But for the first quarter of this year, all divisions had contributed to the stronger figures, the bank said, with the exception of US subsidiary BancWest for which big provisions were made.

Overall writedowns for asset values were restricted to 555 million euros, but provisions for loans that might turn bad more than tripled to 1.8 billion euros, reflecting the effects of recession in many countries, notably Ukraine.

At CM-CIC Securities, analyst Pierre Chedeville said the results signalled a “return among the best” after a “disastrous” fourth quarter in 2008. But he added that they were “crisis results, affected by the very high cost of risk” of unpaid loans.

The results came a week after BNP Paribas cleared a major hurdle in a battle to control Belgium’s biggest lender Fortis, when Fortis shareholders backed its plans to buy the group’s former Belgian banking arm.

That takeover would create the biggest bank in the eurozone in terms of deposits and is expected to cost the French bank 10.4 billion euros (13.8 billion dollars).

BNP Paribas has already cut branches and jobs in Ukraine and said it also plans cuts in Turkey.

ING bank analyst Alain Tchibozo said BNP Paribas’s quick action to reduce costs made its stocks attractive to buyers even in a crisis.

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