Raiffeisen’s profit stood at more than 500 million lei (about EUR110 million), while Banca Transilvania’s reached RON430 million and Citi’s RON281 million.
A number of 16 banks posted profit last year, which stood at RON1.7 billion, down 12% compared with 2013, while the losses of the other 23 banks tripled to almost RON6.4 billion, due to significant loan-loss provisions.
BCR and Volksbank posted the heaviest losses last year, RON2.6 billion and RON1.9 billion. The two banks started an extensive portfolio cleanup process to get rid of their non-performing loans last year, and they were the first to sell large sets of sour loans. Volksbank sold EUR500 million worth of NPLs in July 2014 and BCR concluded two deals worth more than EUR700 million last year.
The aggregate net loss of the banking system stood at almost RON4.4 billion. Banks posted total operating income of about RON8 billion in 2014 but loan-loss provisions were 50% higher than that. Romania’s central bank in mid last year decided to allow bad loans to be written off, but all such loans must be fully provisioned for.
Other banks that contributed to the huge last year’s losses are Greek-held Bancpost (RON269 million), Italian-held Intesa (RON269 million), Marfin (RON188 million), Carpatica (RON173 million) and Veneto Banca (RON166 million). Credit Europe, Alpha and Millennium are the remaining banks among the top ten by losses.
Out of the ten banks that posted the highest losses last year, only four (BCR, Carpatica, Millennium and Alpha Bank) had made profit the previous year. Many banks have been in the red for years now.
Only two banks went from losses to profits last year, BRD and Banca Feroviara. BRD, the second largest bank in Romania by assets posted RON41 million profit, while Feroviara (one of the smallest banks in the system), stood at RON0.6 million.
Garanti, on the other hand, saw its profit shrink to RON1.2 million from the more than RON90 million in 2013, which put in among the top five by profit that year.
The other two lenders among the five most profitable in 2014 were ING Bank and UniCredit Tiriac, RON280 million and RON80 million. Eximbank ranked sixth, with RON47 million profit, while the other state-run lender, CEC Bank, posted about RON8 million profit, staying out of the top ten most profitable banks last year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)