“Appetite for acquisitions and consolidation might be generally great among banks. We have already seen an Austrian bank, Raiffeisen Bank, acquiring the Polish branch of a Greek lender. We now have to see the extent to which mother banks would agree to such transactions for their branches in other countries,” Popa said.
He added that more than one third of credit lines issued by the Greek banks to their Romanian subsidiaries mature in more than one year, and their EUR4.1-4.2 billion value represents some 35% of resources drawn by the branches.
In addition, Greek-owned banks have a substantial amount of state bonds in their portfolios, which will allow short-term liquidity from Romania’s central bank.
According to Popa, Greek banks active in Romania have a solvency ratio or 15.7%, compared to the 14.9% average in the system.