Romanian state-owned CEC Bank targets top-five position after capitalisation

The EUR 200 million capital increase recently approved by the European Commission will help Romanian state-owned lender CEC Bank to set high targets such as ranking among the five biggest banks in the country, the bank’s new CEO Bogdan Neacsu said in a conference, local Agerpres reported.

CEC is one of the two banks still controlled by the Romanian state, alongside Eximbank. Romania’s largest banks are Banca Transilvania (a private lender controlled by Romanian investors), BCR (part of Austrian Erste Group), BRD (part of French Societe Generale Group), followed by the local subsidiaries of UniCredit (Italy) and Raiffeisen (Austria).

The sixth largest lender is ING Bank (the local subsidiary of Dutch group ING), with a market share of 8.5% of the total assets at the end of 2018 followed by CEC Bank with a 6.5% market share. Raiffeisen, which CEC should overtake in terms of assets in order to make it to the top five banks, had a market share of 8.9% at the end of 2018.

The European Commission recently decided that Romania's plans to inject EUR 200 million into the capital of CEC Bank, which is wholly owned by the state, does not represent state aid, as it will be done under market conditions.

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