Petrol Asigurare-Resigurare (Petroleum Insurance-Reinsurance) PETROAS and ADAS Asigurare-Reasigurare companies, controlled by Gelsor financial group are to merge soon to attain an “activity optimisation.” The decision in this regard will be made during the PETROAS General Shareholders Assembly on March 22.
“It is hard to work your way in a market ruled by the large companies, and this is what the merger will help us with,” Ovidiu Dan Florin, PETROAS president, told Ziarul Financiar.
The two companies are still weak on the insurance market. Petroas earned 27 billion lei in 2000, while ADAS made 38 billion lei, therefore the two figures combined account for about one-percent of the total insurance market last year, which amounted to approximately 6,500 billion lei.
“The merger was called for by the need to make the activity more efficient and optimise it. The economic calculations clearly favour merger,” says Marius Florea, ADAS manager. The merger will lead to cutting location and personnel training costs.
PETROAS has a ten billion lei share capital, controlled seventy-percent by the Gelsor Group, while ADAS has 23.5 billion lei in share capital, fully controlled by Gelsor. Both companies are dealing in car and fire insurance field.
The name of the new company is yet to be decided. The only thing for sure is that it will be a merger compliant with “all the regulations in force,” as Ovidiu Dan Florin put it. Under the circumstances, the ADAS Company representative says that the new company may not be called ADAS.
This name, short for Administratia Asigurarilor de Stat (Administration of State Insurance) was taken over perfectly legally by the Gelsor group, which thought it would help it gain a nostalgic market segment, accustomed to associating ADAS with insurance.