The banking market is currently divided into a small group of banks that place their money only among themselves, on one hand, and into another group of banks chasing money, because they are affected by rumours concerning alleged problems, Bogdan Baltazar, vice-president of the Romanian Banks' Association (ARB) and BRD-SocGen chairman, said at the end of last week.
ARB representatives declined to specify which were the banks in question.
This opinion is shared even by the Governor of the National Bank of Romania (NBR), Emil Iota Ghizari, who told Romanian Banks' Association representatives that the central bank would assume the role of an intermediary between the two groups, Baltazar said.
NBR intervention might consist of attracting cash flows from the banks that have not been affected by rumours and placing it to the other group, for certain periods of time.
Over the past period, after the BTR (Turkish-Romanian Bank) crisis, certain rumours appeared on the market according to which several large or medium-sized private banks were facing various problems, but nobody officially specified which those problems were.
"These rumours are very dangerous for the banking system and even for the entire economy. There has been a general consensus among members to look for the sources of these rumours and try to eliminate them," said Radu Gratian Ghetea, ARB chairman and prime vice-president of Alpha Bank Romania.
Related to the same issue, Dan Pascariu, ARB prime vice-president and Bank Austria Romania chairman, says that these rumours might be related to elections, but there is no proof to support this supposition.
"We will resort to a collaboration with specialised institutions (i.e. SRI - Romanian Intelligence) in order to identify rumour sources."
On the other hand, Romanian Banks' Association representatives said that irrespective of elections' results, the banking community would not be subject to any influence.
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