Sources in the banking industry say that it would take a while for the merger to be completed because of the many details left to sort out in Athens before the consolidation is complete. A potential merger completion date would be this fall but no schedule has been announced yet.
The quoted sources say the chief executive officer of Eurobank, Nicholas Nanopoulos, was in Bucharest on Tuesday to meet with the management of Romania’s central bank.
The central bank is not worried about the merger, as a consolidation of Greek-owned banks had been expected for a while now.
Eurobank-owned Bancpost has twice the assets of National Bank of Greece-held Banca Romaneasca, but because of the deal in Greece, it is the bank that will be absorbed.
NBG might agree to keep using the Bancpost brand, because of its greater awareness, but it remains to be seen how the management will be selected.
The new entity will be larger but will not climb as high in Romania’s bank ranking as it would have had Eurobank merged with Alpha Bank instead of NBG as planned in 2011. The new bank that merger would have created would have the third largest bank in Romania in 2011.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)