The capital increase comes at a time when many doubt the ability, as well as the willingness of Greek groups to support their subsidiaries abroad, considering Greece’s public debt problems, which affects Greek banks directly.
Sergiu Oprescu, Alpha Bank’s CEO, says Alpha’s solvency ratio (one of the main prudence indicators followed by Romania’s central bank, which measures capital adequacy to risk) is above the system average. In a recent report, the International Monetary Fund said that average solvency ratio of the overall system was 14.75% in March. No bank had a solvency ratio of less than 11%, with 10% being the minimum required by the central bank.
Alpha is the largest Greek-held local bank, ranking sixth in the system at the end of last year, with a 6.24% market share. The bank ended the first quarter with a loss of EUR5.7 million due to significant provision costs, after managing to remain profitable in the first two years of crisis. It had posted a pretax profit of EUR8.1 million in the first three months of 2010.