BRD to roll over 735m-RON worth of bonds maturing this year

BRD-SocGen, the second-largest bank on the Romanian market, intends to roll over bonds worth 735 million RON it issued on the Luxembourg market in December 2006, which mature this year.

"We will probably launch a new issue in order to replace the maturing bonds," said Claudiu Cercel, the executive VP in charge of financial markets at BRD.
He says the bank currently has a 600 million-euro cap approved by the shareholders for the issuing of RON and euro-denominated bonds, with a fixed or floating interest rate. Over the past few years, the BRD has persistently had such a cap, approved by the GM of shareholders, which has, however, not been used.
In fact, Cercel says the bank has a comfortable position as far as liquidity is concerned, both in RON and in euros, which is why it did not get involved in the war of deposit interest rates. BRD has for over six months frozen its deposit interest rates, being willing to take a decline in amounts attracted from customers in order to hang on to its profitability.