Most Greek banks ended the first half of the year with lossesaccording to Romanian Accounting Standards (RAS), with the biggestlosses being posted by Bancpost (117 million euros) and PiraeusBank (26.3 million euros). After four years of aggressive growth ofthe lending market, especially on the retail segment and on thesegment of real estate projects, the Greeks ended up with over 17%of the assets in the banking system, but the quality of theportfolios started to suffer due to the crisis. Therefore, parentbanks had to come up with capital increases: 151 million euros atBancpost, 20 million euros at Alpha Bank, 18 million euros atPiraeus and 15 million euros at Marfin.
With the exception of Bancpost and Emporiki, local subsidiariesof Greek banks continue to report profits according tointernational accounting standards, but they accumulate lossesaccording to the provision-related methodology required by the NBR(National Bank of Romania).
Piraeus had been one of the players that pursued an aggressivemarket share growth in the last four years, seeing it climb fromaround 1% in 2005 to 3% at the end of 2008, without making anyacquisitions. On June 30th, the bank had 1.9 billion euros inbalance sheet assets, with their share falling to around 2.5% ofthe overall system. Piraeus had become known on the market as oneof the players with the most flexible lending terms.
With a market share of just 0.2%, Emporiki ended the first halfof the year with a 14.3 million-euro loss in RAS, whilst Marfin sawa 12.7 million-euro loss, amid 522 million-euro assets (0.6% of themarket).
Alpha Bank, which dropped in the assets ranking from the 7th tothe 9th position, is now close to the threshold between profit andloss, with a 1 million-euro loss in RAS, as opposed to a 34.7million-euro gross profit, according to International FinancialReporting Standards (IFRS). The bank accumulated a significantexposure to the real estate sector, by providing funding to manyresidential complexes, which are currently no longer able to sellthe apartments.
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