Foreign banks free to bring or withdraw money from the market

The nine major foreign banks that control 70% of the domestic market, Erste Group, Societe Generale, Raiffeisen Group, UniCredit Group, Eurobank EFG, National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank, Volksbank International and Piraeus, no longer have the obligation of maintaining a certain level of exposure on the domestic market, once the agreement reached in Vienna two years ago in parallel with the stand-by agreement signed by Romania with the IMF expires.

This was the outcome of discussions held on Wednesday in Brussels between the representatives of the nine banks and of the IMF, European Commission, NBR and Finance Ministry, according to banking sources.

Initially, the banks had pledged to maintain their exposures at the level of March 2009 in exchange for some placement opportunities offered by the state and bring additional funds so that the solvency of domestic subsidiaries should not fall below the 10% threshold. Which they have largely done.

However, now that crisis pressures have weakened, foreign groups wanted to escape the constraint related to a certain level of exposures, even though a flexible one, as well as the obligation regarding the minimum 10% solvency, succeeding in imposing their point of view.