Banca Romaneasca sees strong growth

Banca Romaneasca, a member of the National Bank of Greece (NBG) Group, totalled 7,205bn ROL in assets at the end of the first quarter of 2004, up 55.6% from the first quarter of 2003. Growth in real terms is 42.5%. The bank was ranking tenth among the foreign-held credit institutions in Romania at the end of 2003, while its market share calculated in line with its assets reaching 1%. The bank’s profit at the end of Q1 was of 103.5bn ROL, having gone up 200% in nominal terms and 195.8% in real terms. The return on equity reached 19.55% while the return on assets accounted for 1.40%. Banca Romaneasca was acquired by the National Bank of Greece (NBG), Greece’s leading financial group, at the end of last year, which decided to expand on the Romanian retail market by developing the branch network of the bank it had bought. As any other international player for that matter, NBG extended its corporate governance principles to Banca Romaneasca. These principles entail separating executive from administrative duties management-wise. ZF