[Photo:  WhisperToMe, Wikimedia Commons]

BNP Paribas' U.S. business was the most profitable among European investment banks in the first 9 months of the year, according to first-ever filings by the firms required by U.S. regulators. The U.S. units of BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank, had a pretax profit of $958Mn on revenue of nearly $4Bn. The firms were asked by the Federal Reserve to consolidate all their U.S. businesses under a holding company starting in July.

Some other statistics:

• Credit Suisse said it lost money in the U.S. in the same period because of restructuring costs.
• UBS had a $1.4Bn U.S. profit, almost all from tax credits. Pretax income was only $123Mn. Such tax credits arose from losses incurred during the 2008 financial crisis.
• Deutsche Bank's U.S. profit exceeded the Frankfurt-based company’s total profit for the first 9 months.
• Deutsche Bank had the most U.S. assets among the group, including assets of branches kept out of the holding companies under the new Fed rules. That still represented a 34% reduction from the end of 2011, when Deutsche Bank last filed a similar consolidated report.