Romanian banks grant 500m-euro funding for Transgaz offering

Romanian banks granted credits and letters of guarantee worth around 500 million euros to investors, in order to subscribe the Transgaz offering, according to sources from the financial market. According to estimates, more than two thirds of the 1.8 billion-euro subscriptions conducted within the Transgaz offering are in fact letters of guarantee from custodian banks on behalf of their clients, with foreign funds also subscribing based on letters of guarantee from international custodian banks. The biggest loans were granted by Raiffeisen Bank, the bank brokering the subscriptions, which issued letters of guarantee and credit lines worth over 300 million euros, the same sources say. The bank’s officials would not comment on these figures. “We don’t have any figures available, pointing to the level of funding granted for Transgaz’s subscriptions. It is very difficult to give an estimative sum, considering that those taking out credits or credit lines did not specify what they would use the money for,” said Dana Ionescu (photo), president of Raiffeisen Capital & Investment (RCI), the brokerage company of Raiffeisen Bank, the main broker of the Transgaz offering. Other banks who have granted funding or letters of guarantee to their clients to subscribe the Transgaz offering are Banca Transilvania, Bancpost, Unicredit Tiriac and BRD.