The announcement requesting letters of intention for the privatisation of CEC (Romanian Savings Bank) will run in the international press in ten days at the latest, depending on how fast the Official Gazette publishes the Government Decision on endorsing the CEC privatisation Strategy, sources from the Privatisation Commission told Ziarul Financiar.
The investors interested in the savings bank are growing restless after the repeated delays in completing the privatisation strategy, so that some of them (Dexia, Erste Bank and Fortis) have decided, in the meantime, to send letters of intention for BCR (Romanian Commercial Bank) instead.
These letters give them access to precious information about the market''s largest bank, which they can use in case they manage to actually buy CEC. The above-quoted banks are obviously not likely to win the BCR race, if at least some of big players that have expressed interest (Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, ABN Amro and KBC) submit firm bids.
For several European groups, CEC is a gateway to the Romanian market, and would allow other institutions, such as Societe Generale and OTP to expand or consolidate their foothold.
CEC chairman Eugen Radulescu yesterday said that the savings bank ended June with gross profit of one million euros, after incurring losses in the first five months of the year, following the declining interest rates for the investments made by the institution.
"CEC''s investments were mostly aimed at T-bills issued by the Ministry of Public Finances, for which rates entered a descending trend as of February, a change that ate into the institution''s revenues. We hope that, by the end of the year, we will manage to offset the losses and post full-year profit," Radulescu added.
According to the CEC chairman, the institution accounts for some 5% of the banking system in terms of assets.
Radulescu estimates that CEC will keep its market share by the end of 2005. razvan.voican@zf.ro
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