The bank came close to 18% in May on the back of retail lending reboot but performance might be short lived considering the “big cleanup” is coming, which would mean a EUR800 million cut of its loan portfolio by removing 25% of the non-performing loan stock as registered at the end of last year from the balance sheet.
BCR does remain the largest bank in the system by assets and its five-month performance shows it has got the potential to rebound once having overcome the structural problems and the portfolio cleanup phase.
On the other hand, BRD, the second largest lender in the system, is not showing any signs of a rebound, as the market share of the SocGen-owned bank dropped to less than 13% again, after having been there temporarily last year and in 2012.
BRD, however, has made more progress in its portfolio cleanup process and this means it is ready for a fresh start, which has yet to come.
Banca Transilvania keeps going at a steady pace as it did during the crisis and overshot the 9% mark, reaching as high as its all-time peak of 9.3% in March and then going back down a bit. The third largest bank in Romania continues to benefit from the support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation and its ambition announced almost a year ago is to reach a share of 10% of the Romanian banking market.
UniCredit and Raiffeisen Bank traded places, with the latter climbing to fourth, and the former dropping to six. While Raiffeisen did not see any spectacular growth, its new position is rather due to UniCredit’s decline, which lost almost 0.6% of its market share compared with December 2013, reaching 7%, after posting a visible decrease in loan volumes in the first quarter.
Raiffeisen’s market share rose slightly from 7.3% to 7.4%.
State-owned CEC Bank preserved its fifth place, although it has recently started losing market share. Lucky for it, it did not lose as much as UniCredit and stopped at 7.2%.
Dutch-held ING remained seventh, after UniCredit, with a record market share of almost 5.2%. The lender continues to grow on its own, as a potential acquisition is a complicated issue unless the parent bank finishes repaying the state-aid it got. The last tranche thereof should be repaid in May 2015.
Alpha Bank, Volksbank and Bancpost stayed on the same positions as at the end of 2013, 8th, 9th and 10th. Alpha Bank reversed its market share decline trend, returning to 4.7% in May. Volksbank’s market share is 3.7%, while Bancpost’s stabilized at 3.3%.
Next in the ranking are nine banks with market shares of 1% to 3%, one fewer than in 2013, after Banca Carpatica slipped slightly below 1% in May. Several lenders in this group climbed one place (Intesa, Veneto Banca and OTP). Hungary’s OTP ranked 17th in May with a market share of about 1.3%.
The youngest lender on the market, Banca Romana de Credite si Investitii (the former ATE Bank) was 34th with 0.1% market share at the end of May.
The first five months did not see any deal closed, even though five or six lenders are up for sale, so at least one such deal may happen soon.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)