“Our strategy has been organic development so far. It will remain our core scenario. We would rather continue this strategy as long as we think growth drivers exist,” Mihaela Bitu told ZF in an interview.
“We are growing for the time being. We would rather focus on organic development, but we will obviously look at the market and if opportunities arise that make sense to us and match our profile, we don’t rule out potential acquisitions or consolidation opportunities.”
ING Bank operates in Romania as a branch of the Dutch group by the same name and has increased its assets by 50% in the last five years. It ranked seventh in the banking system at the end of last year.
The recent years saw several mergers and acquisitions on the local banking market, but there are still banks looking for a buyer. Half of the lenders in the system have less than 1% market share, which has been generating talk about the need for system consolidation for a while.
ING repaid the EUR10 billion bail-out it got from the Dutch government at the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008 so it now has free rein to make acquisitions.
ING Bank saw growth in loan, deposit and transaction volume this year, while the corporate segment of the market continued to decline, but the growth was eroded by the very low interest level, Mihaela Bitu says.
The bank posted 251 million lei (EUR56 million) net profit in January-September, following the double-digit growth of its lending business. Loans stood at RON13 billion at the end of September, an increase of 21% on the year-ago period, with the retail and corporate segments contributing equally to it, while the small and medium-sized enterprise segment contributed 25%.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)