First insolvency case for a major player on leasing market

Internațional Leasing, the business founded by Ioana Necula 15 years ago, is the first major player on the leasing market to go insolvent, with around 25 million euros in overall debt.

The collapse of financing and the decline in the population’s income, which leads to major delays in the payment of instalments to financial institutions, have resulted in the first important insolvency case on the Romanian leasing market, with Internațional Leasing requesting the opening of insolvency proceedings in view of reorganising its operations under the supervision of a judicial administrator. The job was assigned by the Iași Court of Law to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“The leasing market experienced a very significant decline, and we did not have a bank as shareholder to help us cover the losses. As the number of contracts fell following the decline of the financing market, so has the car market and the standard of living, so we started to be faced with late payments from clients. All these factors led to the deterioration of our portfolio because of the increase in the number of bad payers, which left us unable to ensure the company’s cash flow,” Ioana Necula, 37, who founded Internațional Leasing 15 years ago.
The company had around 31 million-euro assets in mid-2010, with debts amounting to around 25 million euros, according to a preliminary report.