The Austrians at Erste, the majority shareholder of Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) will receive around 101 million euros from this amount, as they own 69.17 percent in the bank.
"BCR's first-half figures are very good, although we practically turned the bank on its head during this period. Thanks to BCR, our Central and Eastern European figures look better," Andreas Treichl, the chief executive of Erste Bank and the chairman of BCR's Supervisory Board stated in Vienna yesterday.
The bank increased its net revenues from interests by a little more than 12 percent against the first half of last year, to 264.9 million euros. At the same time, revenues from fees saw a faster progress and climbed by 36 percent, to 105.2 million euros. All in all, the operating revenues of BCR increased by 23 percent, to around 435 million euros.
With general expenses having increased by only 19 percent, to 435 million euros, BCR managed to continue to improve its efficiency indicators. Therefore, the cost/revenue ratio fell by almost two percent, to 54 percent, while the return on equity increased from 18.8 percent to more than 21 percent.
"While speeding up the process of integration into the Erste Bank Group, we managed to post very good results compared with the goals set for the first half of 2007," says Nicolae Danila, BCR's chief executive officer.
Out of the top banks, only BCR has published its first half results thus far. BRD-SocGen, the second largest bank in terms of assets, will publish its results on the 6th of August, while Banca Trasilvania will publish its results on the 10th of August. The UniCredit Group, which holds the fourth-largest bank in the Romanian banking system, UniCredit Tiriac, will announce its results on August 4. Raiffeisen International, Raiffeisen Bank's main shareholder will announce its first-half results in Vienna on August 9.
Treichl reconfirmed the decision to speed up the expansion of BCR's branch network, given that "we have tough competition in Romania."
BCR is expected to reach around 600 branches by the end of the year, considering BRD, which is the second-largest bank on the market in terms of assets, announced it would exceed 700.
Treichl is placing high hopes on the new current account type product BCR introduced this month and in the product and service packages that will be attached to it, so that BCR could increase the amount of deposits attracted from clients, the fee-related revenues and the interest margin. "BCR was lagging behind the market in this department, but will now have the best product on the market," Treichl said. He added he was pleased with the growth of the net revenues from interests in the first half.
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