Paris-listed BNP Paribas said its investment solutions arm, which includes businesses such as wealth and asset management, logged a slight rise in pre-tax income to €473 million ($619 million) in the second quarter of 2010, up from €467 million in the first three months of the year and up from €358 million a year before.

Within wealth and asset management, pre-tax income fell to €233 million in the second quarter, down from €254 million in the previous quarter.

Assets under management were unchanged at €874 billion at the end of June compared with three months previously; within wealth management, AuM rose by 1.4 per cent quarter-on-quarter to €251 billion. The asset size of BNP’s wealth business has risen considerably from a year ago, when it was €154 billion, due in the main to the acquisition by the French bank of Fortis’ private wealth management business.

In the latest quarter, BNP Paribas' wealth business logged €1.4 billion of net inflows, compared with €1.7 billion for the previous quarter.

For the French banking group as a whole, it reported net profit (attributable to equity holders) of €2.105 billion, up 31.2 per cent compared to the second quarter of 2009 and down by 7.8 per cent compared to the very high level in the first quarter 2010.

The bank's BIS Tier 1 capital ratio rose to 10.6 per cent at 30 June from 10.5 per cent at the end of March this year.