Banca Transilvania (TLV), the biggest Romanian-held privatebank, is turning to large clients to resume growth, as the bank'smanagement believes the retail segment cannot be a growth driver inthe following year.
The bank's shareholders have approved increasing the sharecapital by 391m RON (95m euros), of which 120m RON (29m euros)represents shareholders' contribution.
The bank thus once again resorts to shareholders' support, afterit distributed dividends for the first time last year, resuming itsgrowth strategy, which was frozen last year as a result of thefinancial crisis. During the 2005-2008 period, Banca Transilvaniaincreased its share capital eight times, from 133m RON to 1.08bnRON, and raised around 420m RON from shareholders.
"We proposed the share capital be increased through cashcontributions as well in order to cement our position, since we seesolid growth opportunities on the domestic market. Shareholdershave unanimously accepted this proposal," stated Horia Ciorcila,founder of Banca Transilvania, reconfirmed yesterday in theposition of board of directors chairman.
He says he targets loan portfolio expansion, also announcing achange of strategy, by shifting to the segment of large companies,after the Cluj-Napoca-based lending institution managed to reachthe top ten of largest banks domestically in terms of assets bymainly lending to small and medium-sized companies andindividuals.
Last year, the bank's loan portfolio rose by around 4.5% in RON,to 11.5bn RON (2.74bn euros), particularly boosted by the corporatesegment, which climbed by over 10% to 5.04bn RON (1.2bn euros). Onthe SMEs segment, placements dropped by around 9%, to 1.67bn RON(400m euros) and on the retail one the volume of loans fell by 5%,to 4.95bn RON (1.17bn euros), according to the annual report.
For this year, Banca Transilvania has budgeted a 17% loanincrease and in the first quarter registered 2.3% growth in RON, to12.4bn RON (3bn euros).
The bank's shareholders on Wednesday also decided on the newstructure of the board of directors for the next four years, withthree of the former members, Horia Ciorcila, Roberto Marzanati andRobert Rekkers being re-elected. The other four positions went toCostel Ceocea, SIF Moldova chairman, Peter Kranklin, EBRDrepresentative, Radu Palagheanu, founder of the bank, and CarmenRetegan, general manager of Verida Credit mortgage lender, with thelatter choice coming as a surprise.
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