The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), whose investments total almost 600 million euros, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the investment arm of the World Bank with more than $200 million's worth of investments, both count among the biggest investors in the Romanian financial sector.
This year has broken all records since both institutions have transferred the $111 million each has to pay for 25% in Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) plus two shares in the privatisation of Romania's largest bank.
The two financial institutions recently bought into Banc Post, the fifth bank on the market, acquiring 7.28% each following the conversion of credits by both worth $8 million. EBRD and IFC also have initial stakes of 20% in Miro Bank, which recently changed its name to ProCredit Bank and which specialises in loans for small entrepreneurs.
The most important and largest stake EBRD owns is that in Banca Transilvania, which it has to date backed by allocating nearly 50 million euros to its funding.
EBRD is also a shareholder in Banca Tiriac and Alpha Bank.
It has continued to expand its interests in Romanian banks, and has not exited any of its investments so far, though some of them were made quite a long time ago.
"It is true we will have to think about exits at some point and we are doing this. Our strategy is to maintain such interests for no longer than 4, 5 or 6 years," Jean-Marc Peterschmitt, EBRD Bank Lending division director told Ziarul Financiar.
Peterschmitt feels that the bank's involvement in the banking system does not affect the competition, in fact it invigorates it.
"We fund the consolidation of the banking system in its entirety. For us to back out of a capital investment, we need to consider the yield provided by a specific exit method: sale to either a strategic investor or to the already existing majority shareholder," Peterschmitt explained. Still, the financing granted until now shows that the main beneficiaries of these inflows are clearly those banks in which EBRD holds stakes and in whose support it is therefore directly interested in order to boost the value of its investment.
razvan.voican@zf.ro
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