Romanian state bank Eximbank seeks financing to take over NBG’s local subsidiary

The sale of Banca Romaneasca, the local subsidiary of the National Bank of Greece (NBG), went into standby with the decisions being postponed at least until after the parliamentary elections in Greece on July 7.

Romanian state lender Eximbank, the sole bidder still interested in the NBG subsidiary, is currently facing some problems. On the one hand, it can't take money from the shareholder (the Romanian state), because this would be considered state aid, and, on the other hand, the external financing is more complicated in the case of a state bank, according to unofficial market sources quoted by Economica.net. Furthermore, the latest data available (at the end of 2017) show that the target (Banca Romaneasca) is slightly larger in term of assets than the buyer (Eximbank).

Besides the price for the shares, the buyer will have to refinance credit lines of about EUR 500 million Banca Romaneasca contracted from NBG.

Eximbank is a state-owned bank with a focus on the corporate segment, mainly delivering products tailored for companies involved in foreign trade. It ranked as the country’s 15th largest bank by assets with a share of 1.3% (RON 5.5bn, or EUR 1.2bn assets) at the end of 2017.