Bancpost moves headquarters to cut costs

Bancpost, the eighth largest bank on the Romanian market in terms of assets, is preparing to move its headquarters from the tower block on Calea Vitan to a new office building in the Pipera district, Olimpus Bancpost Office Building, in order to cut rental costs. The building that will accommodate the bank's headquarters is held by Eurobank Properties, a member of the EFG group, which also controls Bancpost, and which paid 40 million euros in the summer of last year to bring the building into its portfolio. The lettable area amounts to 23,000 square metres and was developed by an investor group represented in Romania by Greek businessman Ioannis Papalekas. Mihai Bogza, president of Bancpost, says a large part of headquarters personnel was already at the Pipera building, "and now we are all moving under the same roof." The decision also had to do with the inflexibility of the owners of the Vitan building when it came to renegotiating rent. In fact, the last floors of the tower block have not been rented for almost a year, with the owners failing to reach an agreement on the price with any of the prospective clients. PGV Tower, the building where Bancpost has been headquartered in the last five years, is a building with a 10,000 square-metre lettable area, which was completed in 2003 and has been part of the portfolio of German investment fund DEGI over the last two years.