The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday, March 1, edition that Laurentian Bank of Canada posted first quarter results on Thursday that missed analysts' estimates. The Globe's Stefanie Marotta writes that profit fell to 91 cents a share on an adjusted basis, down from $1.15 a year ago. Analysts had expected a profit of 95 cents a share. In the fall, Laurentian ousted its chief executive officer after a multi-day system outage and a sales process in which the bank failed to attract a buyer. New CEO Eric Provost plans to launch a new plan in the spring aimed at improving its performance. Expenses jumped 8 per cent from the same quarter last year, as the bank upgrades its technology and operations, stemming from issues from the system outage. In the fourth quarter, Laurentian spent $5-million waiving customer fees and resolving the system issues. This quarter, it allocated an additional $2-million to the effort. Deposits dropped as it shed account balances that are more expensive for the bank to fund. RBC's Darko Mihelic says, "It should be somewhat expected that the bank is currently spending to adjust its business, so lower-than-expected results because of high expenses is not overly concerning in our view."