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Top banks continue with aggressive expansion plans

Top players on the Romanian banking market continue to massively invest in territorial expansion, with such investment plans on a short term not to be affected by concerns related to the current crisis the world banking system has to deal with or by such slowing down in the increase of the profit forecasted by the bankers for 2009, on the background of measures taken by the central bank to limit crediting.

Romanian Commercial Bank (BCR), the leader of the system in terms of assets, opened on Monday its number 600 unit, with the bank to reach 650 units by the end of the year.

Dominic Bruynseels, Executive Chairman with the BCR says that the bank hired 160 employees at the 40 new units opened this year.

BCR targets 700 units and agencies by the end of next year, according to Business standard. The Austrians' from Erste Bank, which is the majority shareholder of BCR, objective on a short term is to recover the gap in terms of territorial expansion against the Romanian Bank for Reconstruction and Development - Societe Generale.

BRD-SG, the second player on the market in terms of assets and network, announced its investment plans scheduled for 2009, also specifying such plans will not be changed because of the worries on the world banking market, with investments been needed for the bank to face the strengthened competition in the banking sector. ' We have invested 50-60 million euros on an annual basis and we have no intentions to change our investment plans for 2009,' the BRD-Groupe Societe Generale Chairman Patrick Gelin said. He also added that there is no chance the bank stop investing in its territorial expansion.

The third player on the domestic market in terms of assets Raiffeisen Bank continued to develop its network in 2008 too, with an aggressive expansion of the bank having been noticed, in the context 170 new banking units were opened in 2007.

Top bankers on the market estimate a slowing down in the profit in 2009, with the situation having been explained through several of the top banks being to cash the money from selling their insurance divisions.

BRD-Groupe Societe Generale reported in the first half of the year the most significant net mid-year revenues in the history of the bank, standing at 515 million lei (140.3 million euros), that is an increase by 23 percent compared with the same interval last year.

BCR, which has not so long ago entered the Erste Bank portfolio in a deal worth 3.75 billion euros, reported a net consolidated profit after taxes were paid, the same as such payments of minority interests, of 206.6 million euros in the first half of the year.

Raiffeisen Bank Romania, the third local player, held by Raiffeisen International Bank, targets 417. 24 million lei (117.53 million euros) in net profit, before paying taxes, this year, after having recorded a net profit worth 74 million euros January through June.

Sursa: http://www.rompress.ro

Tags: bcr million euros expansion profit banking market plans brd

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