Immorent Romania, the real estate leasing division of Austriangroup Erste has rescheduled financing for 20% of its clients thisyear, whereas in 2008 it did not see any delay in repayments, saysBogdan Cernescu, the company's general manager.
Immorent only works with corporate clients and has almost 100million euros in financing granted, most of which for the realestate sector and the rest for equipment.
"We have discussed with our clients and met with them more oftenthis year to see how they are doing, what problems they areexperiencing, what they expect and rescheduled financing whereneeded. We have rescheduled debt for about one in every fiveclients. They were mainly clients that are not capitalised becauseof the nature of their business, such as distributors, but alsoclients that went with the flow in 2007 and 208 and invested toomuch in production facilities," Cernescu says.
He adds that it is too soon to see the success rate ofrescheduling, which will only be possible to determine after atleast six months from now.
The company has granted a number of its clients grace periods ofthree, six or nine months, depending on the situation of each ofthem. As the leasing market is experiencing a wave of repossessionsfrom clients with cash flow problems, including land and buildings,Cernescu says that the company has not repossessed anything on thereal estate segment yet and has had only a few repossession caseson the equipment segment.
The leasing market has posted a sharp fall this year, 74% in thefirst half, to 776.6 million euros. Real estate leasing accountsfor 20% of total market, with the value of the financed goods inthe first half standing at 152 million euros, down 21% comparedwith the first half of 2008.
Immorent conducted three sale & lease back deals this year,although it had expected more such deals.
One of the three sale & lease back transactions brokered byImmorent was worth more than 10 million euros, while the other tworanged between 1 and 3 million euros.
Bogdan Cernescu expects to end this year with ten new financingcontracts at best. He adds that 2010 will not be much differentthan 2009, as lenders will remain cautious.
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