The bank is negotiating the sale with APS, sources close to the talks said.
BCR has been trying to do some clean up in the past two years, selling about EUR2 billion worth of NPLs, but still has some left. It still needs to sell NPLs with a face value of about EUR1 billion.
Romania’s central bank recommended lenders to clean up their balance sheets as fast as possible to be able to resume lending. Another factor speeding up the process in BCR’s case may have been its owner, Erste, which wanted the bank to focus on growing its business. Jozef Sikela, member of the Erste Board responsible for the corporate segment in January said BCR would continue to sell over EUR1 billion worth of NPLs and then grow its business and lending.
At the end of 2015, BCR sold a set of non-performing corporate loans with a face value of EUR1.2 billion to a consortium comprised of Deutsche Bank, IFC and APS at a price of less than 10%. This was the biggest NPL sale in Romania. BCR expected the deal to drive its NPL ratio down by about five percent to 17%.
BCR started 2015 by putting up for sale a set of NPLs with a face value of EUR3.5 billion in one go, but the deal fell through because the price private equity firm Lone Star offered was lower than Erste had expected.
After the deal fell through, Erste-BCR decided to break it up into smaller chunks and talks with Deutsche Bank resumed in the final months of the year.
BCR also sold two sets of NPLs in 2014, a EUR300 million one for EUR30 million and a EUR400 million one for about EUR28 million.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)