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Although registering a first half loss of 61.9 million euro, the largest bank in Romania, Banca Comercială Romana (BCR), counts on corporate and SMEs in fields such as energy, agriculture, constructions, pharmacy & healthcare, industry, IT&C to grow its lending base.
In corporate business, performing loan portfolio stabilized at around RON 12.0 billion, with June 2014 eing the first month in the year when overall loan balance ticked up versus previous month.
„The uptick was mainly generated by increased new lending to SME and large corporate clients in sectors such as energy, agriculture, constructions, pharmacy & healthcare, industry, IT&C with exposures to real estate and public sector entities continuously decreasing. Average corporate interest rate at end of H1 was 15 bp lower than year end 2013”, bank officials say.
BCR achieved in the first half of 2014 an operating result of RON 1,096.6 million (EUR 245.6 million), underpinned by solid commercial performance of the healthy business, encompassing strong market share in new lending, along reinforcement of deposit base.
On the back of historical high solvency (16.4%) and strong capitalization (RON 7.3 billion), the bank has undertaken to accelerate resolution of NPL legacy, despite short term profitability impacted by consequent sustained provisioning. Net result at six months is negative at RON 276.6 million (EUR 61.9 million).
Tomas Spurny, CEO of BCR has stated: “We enter the second half of 2014 with strong intention to clean our balance sheet and enhance future capacity to deliver strong performance from healthy and solid core of the Bank. That healthy core, the current commercial performance, shows continuing signs of improvement, as BCR delivers respectable new lending market share along reinforcement of the overall deposit base. Aside from accelerated resolution of NPL legacy, we plan to further improve our competitive capacity in both Retail and Corporate franchises of the Bank.”
