Six months were enough for the bank rankings in terms of assets to undergo a number of significant changes, especially for the middle order of the top ten positions.
CEC has slipped from fourth to fifth, displaced by ABN Amro, which climbed two positions since the end of last year, leaving behind its fellow Dutch rival, ING. ING slipped two positions from fifth to seventh, while HVB moved up from seventh to sixth, thanks to some spectacular results at the end of the first half. Bancpost held on to the eighth position, despite a shrinking market share. Finally, Alpha Bank traded places with Banca Transilvania, which is now on the rise, climbing to ninth place.
Although the top three positions saw no change, the first half of the year only ended with a gain in market share for BRD-SocGen, the second bank on the market, with Banca Comerciala Romana and Raiffeisen losing ground compared with the end of 2004.
At the end of June, BCR had a market share of 25.1%, down less than one percent from December 31, 2004. Compared with 2003, BCR lost more than four percent of the market.
Meanwhile, the retail campaign conducted by BRD-SocGen led to a growth in its market share by 1.2% to a level of 14.2%. This makes the target for Austrian bank Raiffeisen of catching with the second placed bank all the harder, since it saw its market share fall by 0.4%. Raiffeisen''s assets account for 8.8% of the total banking system.
NBR statistics reveal that the largest bank on the market, BCR, had more than 7.3bn euros in assets at the middle of this year, while BRD exceeded 4.1bn euros and Raiffeisen reached 2.5bn euros, showing that the three are still spread quite far apart.
Further down the rankings is the fourth leading player in the system, ABN Amro, taking the place of Casa de Economii si Consemnatiuni (Savings Bank - CEC), with 1.8bn euros in assets, which translate into a 6.4% market share. The Dutch bank is continuing to stand its ground at the upper end of the rankings thanks to its operations with corporate clients (the services it began to offer to non-corporate customers are a marginal segment for the bank).
As for CEC, the old savings-focused bank is continuing to suffer the effects of many years of immobility, losing another two percent of the market to 5% of total banking assets. It is not clear whether CEC ended the first half with profits or losses, since the bank refused to reveal its financial results for the period. It remains to be seen whether the steps taken to change CEC''s status - in order to be able to conduct the operations of a commercial bank - will be able to stop the decline in the second half of the year.
Right behind CEC is HVB, which also has 5% of the market and will find it easy to continue to climb to fifth spot by itself. Taking the merger with Banca Tiriac into account, HVB can already be regarded as the fourth top bank, some one percent behind Raiffeisen. ING witnessed a sharp decline in market share in 2005, (a 0.7% drop), reporting 1.4bn euros in assets with the central bank. The local branch of the Dutch group slipped two positions in the rankings since the end of 2004, despite rapid growth in the number of new customers attracted through the retail programme developed around the Self Banking concept.
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