HVB Bank, Banca Tiriac and UniCredit Romania, the three banks that will form a group by early next year, held total assets worth 3.08 billion euros at the end of the first quarter.
Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA), the main shareholder of the bank that will be created by the merger of HVB Bank with Banca Tiriac, witnessed a slight decline in the assets of its branches on the Romanian market to 2.499 billion euros, 5% less than at the end of 2005.
The operating income of the two banks stood at 14.8 million euros. A year ago, HVB Bank managed to post 11.5 million-euro profit by itself. Converted in RON, the cumulated profit of the two banks amounted to 53 million RON, 23% higher than posted by HVB in the first quarter of 2005.
UniCredit Romania increased its assets by 52% compared with March last year to 632 million euros. Compared with the end of last year, the asset growth reaches about 15%.
The first quarter generated a 2.7 million euro profit for UniCredit, 127% higher than in the first three months of last year. The bank posted net revenues worth 11.4 million euros at the end of March, 61% more than a year ago.
"We will continue to focus on the development of the bank and on consolidating the client portfolio by rallying the services provided in each branch to the quality standards of the UniCredit Group. Our goals this year are to achieve a fast-paced growth of our net assets and total revenues," says Rasvan Radu, executive chairman of UniCredit Romania.
The three banks thus manage to cumulate assets that are slightly above those of Raiffeisen, which currently ranks third in the domestic banking system.
According to the data published by Raiffeisen Bank''s majority shareholder, the Raiffeisen International group, bank''s assets went down slightly in the first three months of the year, reaching 3.02 billion euros.
The Austrians at Raiffeisen did not publish profit figures (the detailed results are published only every six months), so that a comparison in this regard cannot be made.
The battle for the third position in the 2007 rankings look to be fierce as it remains to be seen whether Raiffeisen manages to take advantage of the time during which the merger of HVB Bank, Banca Tiriac and UniCredit Romania will make it more difficult for the three to expand their business.
HVB Bank and Banca Tiriac cumulated a pre-tax net profit of 14.2 million euros, compared with 11.9 million euros HVB made in the first quarter of 2005.
Under the circumstances, the cost / revenue efficiency index worsened significantly, going up to 43.7%. A year ago, HVB spent only 26 eurocents for each euro. However, the cost/revenue ratio of the two entities remains lower than that of most BA-CA branches in the Central and Eastern Europe.
The three banks in figures
* HVB Bank and Banca Tiriac posted 14.8m-euro (53m RON) profit together in Q1, 2006
* UniCredit Romania logged 2.7m-euro profit in the first quarter, 127% higher than in Q1, 2005
* The three banks'' assets put together are slightly larger than those of Raiffeisen Bank, the third leading player in the system
* The three banks'' cumulated assets amounted to 3.08bn euros in Q1.
liviu.chiru@zf.ro
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