Romania's BCR gives up selling EUR 2.7 bln bad loan portfolio

Romanian lender BCR, the biggest local bank in terms of assets, has decided to cancel the procedures for selling a EUR 2.7 billion non-performing loan package, as the received offers were too low, according to Bloomberg. Investment funds Blackstone Group LP and Lone Star Funds were the only bidders that remained in the race for buying the bad loan portfolio called Project Neptune. This included corporate loans, as well as mortgage loans. In August, Andreas Gottschling, risk director at Erste, the Austrian group which owns BCR, said that the company would consider only offers with a “very modest” discount compared to the non-performing loans’ carrying amount. In 2014, BCR sold non-performing loans worth EUR 452 million, reducing its bad loan volume by 24% compared to 2013. The NPL rate thus dropped to 25.7%. editor@romania-insider.com