Financial market sources say Eurobank hired the investment arm of HSBC in London to handle the process.
Officially, we know nothing; if there is such a process, Athens is taking care of it, a banker in Bucharest said.
As part of the agreements with the international lenders – the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, the Greek banking groups must scale back their assets in the Balkans and complete the process by 2018.
In Romania, National Bank of Greece (NBG) hired investment bank Credit Suisse to find an investor and handle the sale of its Romanian subsidiary – Banca Romaneasca.
Bancpost ranked 9th among banks in Romania at the end of 2015, with a 3% market share, lower than in 2014. It had about 1 million retail, corporate and institutional clients.
A top ten bank with a 3% market share up for sale on a Romanian market that is overcrowded with small banks is a rare thing.
The last top ten bank to be sold was Volksbank, which Banca Transilvania bought in 2014.
Bancpost had 11.1 billion lei (EUR2.46 billion) assets at the end of September 2016, up 5.7%, while the profit stood at RON31.4 million. Deposits reached RON8.7 billion and gross loans stood at RON5.9 billion.
Loan-to-deposit ratio was 68%, which confirms the high financial independence of Bancpost, the bank said after announcing its results.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)