Paris/Brussels - French-Belgian bank Dexia said Thursday that it had lost 3.326 billion euros (4.25 billion dollars) in 2008 primarily because of losses related to the US subprime crisis.

Turnover fell by nearly half compared with 2007, to 3.556 billion euros, with the financial crisis eating nearly 6 billion euros out of the bank's earnings, Dexia said in a statement.

Dexia suffered more than half of that negative impact in the fourth quarter of last year, when it posted a loss of 2.6 billion euros.

In a statement, Dexia board chairman Jean-Luc Dehaene thanked the governments of Belgium, France and Luxembourg for injecting 6.4 billion euros into the bank last year to prevent it from failing.

A former Belgian prime minister, Dehaene was named Dexia board chairman in October 2008 to lead the bank out of the crisis.

Investors reacted predictably to the results, bidding down Dexia's share price by 7.56 per cent, to 1.59 euros, in midday trading on the Paris Bourse.

Because of the financial crisis, Dexia shares have now lost more than 90 per cent of their value over the past 52 weeks. (dpa)