French Insurers Scor, CNP Post Higher Profits

French insurance companies Scor and CNP posted higher first-half earnings on Wednesday after managing to ride out the credit crisis in the global financial markets.

Scor, the world’s fifth-biggest reinsurer, said first-half net profit rose 24 percent from last year to €225 million ($331 million).

Earnings were partly boosted by last year’s takeover of Swiss rival Converium — a deal which made the French company the fifth-biggest player in the global reinsurance industry.

Scor’s profit rise trumped the performances of larger rivals Munich Re and Swiss Re, the world’s two biggest reinsurers who both reported lower earnings earlier this month following large write downs related to the credit crunch.

Scor said it had a relatively limited exposure of €42 million ($62 million) to the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.

CNP, France’s biggest personal insurer, also said it had seen little impact on its performance from the credit market turmoil.

“Our solvency ratios provide evidence of our very robust financial position, particularly as our asset backed securities (ABS) portfolio has virtually no exposure to the market segments that are currently in crisis,” said CNP Chief Executive Gilles Benoist.

CNP said its first-half net profit edged up 1.1 percent to €574 million ($846.3 million). The company also kept its 2008 target for double digit growth in attributable recurring profit.

French state-owned bank Caisse des Depots (CDC), the country’s Post Office and mutually owned bank Groupe Caisse d’Epargne together own around 75 percent of CNP.

CNP shares closed at €80.98 ($119.40) on Tuesday, giving the company a stock market value of around €12 billion ($17.7 billion).

Scor shares closed at €15.52 ($22.88), giving Scor a market capitalization of around €2.9 billion ($4.27 billion).

Both Scor and CNP shares have fallen roughly 10 percent since the start of the year, compared with a 24 percent fall in the DJ Stoxx European insurance index.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; editing by Sue Thomas)