BNP Q3 Profits Slump on 2 Billion Euro Greek Charge

France's biggest listed bank BNP Paribas reported a 71.6 percent slide in third-quarter earnings on Thursday after it booked a bigger-than-expected 2 billion-euro ($2.76 billion) charge on Greek debt and sold billions of euros' worth of eurozone government bonds.

The charge equates to 60 percent of BNP's sovereign exposure to the debt-wracked Greek economy, the bank said in a statement, and is higher than BNP's previous outlook for a pre-tax Greece charge of up to 1.7 billion euros.

Quarterly net profit at BNP fell by 71.6 percent, to 541 million euros, lagging the 991.9 million consensus mean estimate of nine analysts polled by Reuters.

Revenues fell 7.6 percent, to 10.0 billion euros, also missing analysts' mean estimate of 10.48 billion.

($1 = 0.725 Euros)

(Reporting By Lionel Laurent; Editing by Christian Plumb)