Piraeus ends summer with record sales and profit

The Greeks at Piraeus are starting to see the first effects of their massive investment campaign in the profit figures, as well. In the first seven months of 2007, the bank made 8.6 million euros in gross profit, compared with 3.8 million euros in 2006, while assets have more than doubled since the beginning of the year.
Catalin Parvu, the general manager of Piraeus Bank Romania, who is in charge of the development of the Retail and Operations divisions says the strong rise in lending has allowed profit to pick up speed, too.
“We achieved a 400 million-euro increase in the volume of retail loans, which carry higher interests and higher granting fees,” explains Parvu who was brought on board last winter, to be part of the management team of Piraeus Bank. The volume of funding also increased on the corporate segment by 300 million euros and even though the interest margin is lower on this segment, the bank still derives higher revenues from the fees it charges for the operations conducted by its clients.
Parvu added the Treasury also had an important contribution, accounting for more than a quarter of the profit figures.
“I expect us to make 15 or 18 million euros in profit for the entire 2007,” Piraeus’ head of retail said. The Piraeus officials initially estimated their gross profit to double in 2007 compared with 2006, to more than 7 million euros.
The growth of assets, which overshot the 2 billion-euro mark in August (starting from 850 million euros last December), was also helped by the fast-paced increase in retail lending.
The total volume of loans granted by the bank went up from 692 million euros last December to 1.7 billion euros in August.
Loans to individual customers went up from 130 million euros at the end of 2006 to more than 600 million euros in August. Retail loans thus came to account for some 35% of the total funding, and Parvu believes they could account for as much as 45% by yearend.