NBG hunting for other banks

As an attempt to further expand on the Romanian market, the National Bank of Greece (NBG) has set its eyes on Banca ?iriac. Banking sources say NBG representatives from Greece had several talks with their peers at ?iriac in Bucharest a few weeks ago, to see whether it was up for sale and find out the terms.

When Ziarul Financiar reached them, officials of the two banks said either “no comment” or that they had heard nothing of the sort.

“No comment,” said Anthony van der Heijden, Banca ?iriac chairman. “We have no such information,” Ekaterini Karageorgou, NBG’s Bucharest branch chairman, said in her turn. NBG, a commercial bank, is the most powerful financial group in Greece. It opened its branch in Bucharest in 1996.

Ever since that moment, the bank has been engaged on a search for Romanian banks up for sale, to gain a large share of the banking market and subsequently catch up with the other Greek banking groups.