French bank Natixis held back €120 million ($135 million) of expected profits on hard-to-value derivatives over the six months to end-June, most of which were linked to the sale of equity linked products.

The bank’s deferred margin – its expected profit on sales of structured products and complex derivatives kept off the income statement because of valuation uncertainty – was €87 million at the start of this year and just €76 million at end-2017.

The build-up of expected profits was driven by