Disregarding impairments and provisions, the core bank generated EUR 318.4m in profit or EUR 130.2m more than in 2011, mainly due to one-off effects of early redemption of financial instruments at a discount.

The improvement of the result before impairments was also due to a better cost effectiveness, the bank said on Monday.

Profit before impairments at the group level rose by 18% on the year before to EUR 299m.

The group's capital adequacy fell by 0.7 percentage points from the end of 2011 to 10.4% at the end of 2012. The Core Tier 1 ratio was up 2.4 points to 8.7%, which is still below the level recommended by the European Bank Association.

At the end of the year conditions were met for the conversion of EUR 320m worth of hybrid state loan into stock.