Carabulea: Carpatica's lower profit is natural

The net profit of Banca Carpatica saw a strong decline last year, by almost 59% against 2006, to 7.98 million RON (2.4 million euros), however, Ilie Carabulea, the main shareholder of the lender, believes the dwindling profit is “natural”, given the high investments in network expansion. “The result is natural, because this is a normal phase in our activity. When you build a home, it is normal to incur expenses; then you start to recover these costs, and eventually step into the black. We now have 247 territorial branches, from 50 a year and a half ago, which places us at number 6 in the banking system,” Carabulea told ZF. He estimates the bank has a 1% market share in terms of the value of assets. Many banks on the market allocated large sums last year to increase their branch networks, with the total number of units in the banking system standing at 1,080, however, for many banks, the expenses did not result in lower profit. The assets of Banca Carpatica went up by 40% last year, to 2.28 billion RON (equivalent to 631 billion euros), a similar growth rate to that of the market.