Zurich - Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse posted a soaring third-quarter net profit on Thursday, but still fell far short of analyst expectations amid worsening market conditions.
For the July-September period, the bank, Switzerland's second-biggest, made a net profit of $510m, nearly double what it made during the same period a year ago.
Yet the results still fell far short of the expectations of analysts polled by the AWP financial news agency, who had expected the bank to see a net profit of 803 million francs in the third quarter.
Before taxes, the bank also saw its profit soar in the third quarter to 685 million francs, up from 348 million a year earlier, but this number also resoundingly missed analyst expectations of a pre-tax profit of 1.1 billion francs.
"In the third quarter of 2013, our continued expense discipline and effective capital management mitigated the impact of challenging market conditions, characterised by low levels of client activity across many of our businesses," bank chief executive Brady Dougan said in the earnings statement.
The bank, which has embarked on a major restructuring, said it had raised its cost-savings target and now was on track to save 4.5 billion Swiss francs in expenses by the end of 2015, up from a previously announced 4.4 billion.
Since the beginning of the year, Credit Suisse said it had made cost savings of 3.0 billion francs.
Following the announcement, the price of shares in the bank fell by 2.14% to 29.20 francs in early trading, as the main Swiss stock exchange index ticked up 0.07%.