In 2005, he was in charge of acquisitions within Portuguese group Millennium and as such headed Millennium’s bid for Romanian lender BCR’s privatization contract, and the group managed to stay in the race until the final stage, while much stronger players such as Deutsche Bank, Intesa and BNP Paribas left the competition one by one.
Over the course of the privatization race Toscano said he was very confident in Millennium’s chances of success, and according to unofficial information the offer of the Portuguese bank was only slightly topped by that of the Austrian bank.
After the BCR failure, the Portuguese banker remained in Romania for another ambitious project: the start from scratch of a new, universal bank, which was set to grow fast.
In the autumn of 2007, he launched the local operations of Millennium Bank, bringing to the market a network of 40 units, 500 people and a full package of services for individual clients and companies. The plan was very aggressive, entailed investments of around EUR300 million and the expansion of the network to 100,000 units in the third year of business.
In order to force growth, the Portuguese bank even brought mortgage loans in Swiss francs to the market in the autumn of 2007, many clients fell into the trap of taking out the loans because their costs were lower than for euro loans, but now have to pay much higher costs because of the significant depreciation of the Romanian leu against the Swiss franc.
After eight months of business, the Portuguese bank had reached assets of over EUR200 million in the summer of 2008, but the financial crisis that broke on the international markets that autumn upset Millennium’s ambitions. The bank’s plan to start making a profit in 2011 was suspended and the pressure on banks grew from one year to the next as recession took hold of the local economy.
Having been entrusted with the mission to lead a bank built from scratch to fast growth, Toscano ultimately had to manage the effects of a crisis all the more difficult to withstand by a very young lending institution, which had not had the time to accumulate a critical mass of business. Romanians Dan Sandu and Dorel Piti left the bank’s management team one after the other, so in the summer of 2011 those in charge of executive management were Toscano and Nuno Fereira Alves.
Millennium sought to stand out on the market through innovative products and by laying more emphasis on the online segment, it made a name for itself on the segment of mortgage loans, but the crisis affected its business and in the autumn of last year Millennium Group decided the Romanian-based bank was no longer essential to the group’s business and put it on the list of assets for sale. But the market of banking transactions is very weak, so the chances of finding a buyer are very slim.
For now, only Hungary’s MKB managed to exit the market by selling Romexterra to a group of investors led by Asian fund PineBridge, but without being able to recoup its investment.
Toscano is set to be replaced by another Portuguese, whose mission will be to continue efforts to consolidate the business, cut costs in order to return to profit and rethink operating priorities.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)