Crédit Agricole, France’s third largest bank, reported a 94 per cent fall in net profits in the second quarter on Thursday as it wrote-down €1.1bn due to its exposure to US monoline insurers.

Although the results were weaker than expected, the write-downs were in line with expectations. However, the shares rose on hopes that the bank had got the worst of the mark-downs out of the way and on reassurance that its solvency was solid, following its €5.9bn rights issue.