Hungary's MKB determined to sell Romexterra

Hungary’s MKB bank, controlled by Bayern LB German group, has officially embraced an exit strategy related to the Romanian market, planning to sell MKB Romexterra Romanian subsidiary by 2013.

According to the annual 2010 report published in Budapest, the sale price that could be obtained is put at almost 2.4bn forints (around 9m euros) on the basis of forecast cash flow, considering the bank should post further losses in 2011 and 2012 because of bad loans.

MKB Romtexterra ended last year with losses of 17.8bn forints (around 64m euros), in line with Hungarian accounting standards. Net interest income dropped by 43% from 2009, to 9.3bn forints, while fee gains halved, to 1.5bn forints.

As a matter of fact, the bank also registered losses in 2009 (around 9.5m euros) and 2008 (almost 20m euros), with the positive operating result being hurt by losses related to loans unrecovered from clients.

Set up with a heterogeneous shareholder structure in Târgu-Mureș in 1994, Romexterra was taken over by Hungary’s MKB in 2006, at a time when the economy and the banking market particularly were booming.