According to banking market sources ZF talked with, the discussions between ING and BBVA, the majority stakeholder in Garanti Bank Romania, are one-to-one, with the Spanish group having not opened a sale process inviting other banks that might be interested in the Romania bank. And there are other such banks.
The talks are also supported by the fact that Pinar Abay, the new star of the Dutch group ING, was for many years a colleague of Onur Genc, BBVA’s CEO, at consultancy McKinsey Turkey.
BBVA is trying to find a future solution for Romania banking operations as it has not had a clear accelerated growth strategy on the Romanian market and can lose ground should it not invest.
Garanti Bank Romania is a quite good bank, a clean one, and the Spanish are asking an additional premium for it, the banking sources told ZF.
For ING, which ranks 7th on the Romanian banking by assets held at end-2024, the acquisition of Garanti would make sense as it brings a quite clean portfolio, particularly in the corporate area, more specifically in the small corporate one.
At the end of 2024, according to Romania central bank data, ING Romania had assets worth RON78 billion (EUR15.7 billion), with an 8.85% market share, while Garanti BBVA Romania had assets of RON16.93 billion (EUR3.4 billion), with an 1.89% market share.
Should it succeed in acquiring Garanti, ING would immediately leap to an over 10% market share, which would make it fight for the third position.
According to analysts, doing banking is becoming increasingly more expensive because of regulations and not least the competition on the Romanian market and analyses show holding a market share of above 10% is necessary in Romania to matter on the banking market.
Analysts consider the Romanian banking system has way too many banks (36%) and there is no way they can all survive amid rising regulations, competition and not least the banking tax levied in Romania, of 4%, which is emerging as an extremely costly burden for the banks in the second or third tier.
ING made in Romania a gross profit of RON1.8 billion, namely EUR360 million, in 2024 amid RON3.8 billion revenues (EUR770 million). Deposits attracted from clients topped RON70 billion, while the loan portfolio reached RON45 billion.
Garanti Bank Romania had a RON133 million profit at the end of 2024, namely EUR27 million) amid net revenues of RON654 million (EUR131 million), with RON13 billion deposits and loans of RON11 billion.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)