Austrian group Raiffeisen Bank International integrated its Romanian investment banking activities, both on the capital market and in the mergers & acquisitions (M&A) area, into Raiffeisen Bank.

The new investment banking unit of Raiffeisen Bank will be coordinated by Dana Mirela Ionescu, and will function within the Treasury and Capital Markets Division of the bank, led by vice-president James Stewart.

Dana Ionescu is the former general manager of Raiffeisen Capital and Investment, Raiffeisen’s brokerage firm in Romania, which was absorbed by the bank this year. She joined Raiffeisen in 2005, after working for Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world, and Oaktree Capital Management, a US hedge fund manager.

Since taking helm of Raiffeisen Capital & investment, Dana Ionescu has been involved in some of the largest transactions on the Romanian capital market, the most recent of which were the dual listings of natural gas producer Romgaz and electricity distributor Electrica.

Raiffeisen Capital & Investment was part of the consortium that intermediated the sale of a 15 percent stake in Romgaz by the Romanian state, in October 2013, in a EUR 391 million transaction. This year, Raiffeisen led the consortium that listed 51 percent of Electrica following a EUR 444 million IPO. Both Romgaz and Electrica were listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange.

Raffeisen also intermediated the IPO of gas transport company Transgaz, in 2008, and in 2013 helped the state sell another 15 percent stake in the company via secondary public offering. It also worked on a few private placements for Fondul Proprietatea and EBRD.

In the first half of this year, Raiffeisen was the most active intermediary on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, with a trade value of EUR 825 million, which is 25 percent of the whole market volume.

The new investment banking unit also take over the activity of Raiffeisen Investment, which intermediated some of the largest M&A transactions in Romania in the last ten years, such as the takeover of insurance company Asiban by French group Groupama in 2008, for EUR 350 million, or the sale of pharmaceutical producer Labormed Pharm, also in 2008, for EUR 121 million.

Ioana Filipescu, who had been leading Raiffeisen investment for ten years as general manager, left Raiffeisen recently to make her own consultancy firm.

Andrei Chirileasa, andrei@romania-insider.com