First quarter ends with changes at the top of the bank ranking

The export of loans to the balance sheets of the parent banks, as well competitive pressure have caused visible changes in the market share ranking of the banking system in the first three months of the year. Out of the top 15 banks in terms of assets, five saw their market shares decline compared with the end of 2005: Raiffeisen, HVB, Bancpost, ABN Amro and Banca Tiriac.

On the other hand, the winners of the pack are headed by ING Bank, which boosted its assets by more than half a billion euros and successfully upped its share of the market by one percent to 6.3%. At the same time, the market leaders, BCR and BRD, continued to grow, by 0.2% each, thanks to their respective large volumes of retail operations. BCR thus came to a 25.9% market share, which corresponds to a total of 9.7 billion euros in assets, while BRD accounts for 15.2% of the market.

Overall, the market achieved a solid 8.3% growth, with the assets of the banking system amounting to 37.7 billion euros at the end of March. The third bank on the market, Raiffeisen Bank, maintained its position even though it witnessed one of the sharpest declines in market share, 0.7%, to 8% of the market.

HVB”s market share went down by 0.7%, too, reaching 4.2%, while the bank”s balance sheet fell by more than 230 million euros.

“We transferred some of our operations to Vienna and the trend will continue,” Dan Pascariu, HVB Bank chairman told ZIARUL FINANCIAR. As the market share of Banca Tiriac, HVB”s merger partner, shrank from 2.5% to 2.3% in the first quarter, the future HVB Tiriac Bank would have been fifth on the market on March 31, with 6.5%, a very small edge on ING.

The first three months of 2006 witnessed a spectacular rebound of CEC, whose sales of credits reach significant volumes: the former savings bank climbed from seventh to the fifth position, with a 4.5% market share, given that assets went up by 180 million euros.

CEC thus outpaced HVB and Bancpost at the end of March. Bancpost is one of those credit exporters, so that its assets shrank by some 30 million euros compared with December, which translated into a 0.5% market share decline to 4%.

“We transferred abroad part of the loans in foreign currency, but we were also faced with a certain volatility of large deposits,” explained Mihai Bogza, Bancpost chairman. He says the bank caught up in April, thanks to the retail lending, and to mortgage lending especially.

A significant increase, 0.3% was that of Alpha Bank, which climbed from ninth to seventh, with assets worth 1.53 billion euros, leaving Bancpost behind and making the clash of the two Greek-held bank fiercer in the process.

At the same time, Banca Transilvania, Banca Romaneasca, UniCredit and Volksbank achieved minimal growth of the market shares, by 0.1%. Still, Transilvania dropped from eighth to ninth place.

The market share of the Dutch at ABN Amro continued to close after last year”s fall, to 3.5% from the 3.7% in December. This bank”s assets amounted to 1.314 billion euros. razvan.voican@zf.ro