Romania is gradually becoming a deal for Turkish and Greek companies, as investors from these countries can find here an extremely favourable climate for making money.
High inflation, rocketing interest rates, economic difficulties and political scandals are neither a novelty nor something unusual for these investors, because they had frequently witnessed such situations in their countries and this is why they know how to manage them.
On the other hand, “serious” investors from the European Union and the United States have invested too little as compared to the money they “pumped” in Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary. Even though Holland, Germany, Italy, the United States and France rank first in the investments top, while Greece and Turkey rank 10th and 13th, those companies who came to Romania from serious countries are of a medium level, except for companies such as ING, ABN Amro, Societe Generale, Renault. Large world corporations, excepting cigarette ones, develop no intense activities on the Romanian market, other than subsidiaries or sales outlets, where product acquisitions are made with money paid in advance. Large production centres or important acquisitions are ruled out.
Societe Generale’s acquisition of BRD and the investment General Electric originally announced with much ado in Banc Post were based upon a political decision. Banc Post was sold within just a year by General Electric and the US company decided to hold only an insignificant stake of 10 percent within the bank.
On the other hand, increasingly more Turkish and Greek banks have entered the Romanian banking market over the past two years. This year, Piraeus Bank bought Pater Bank’s operations, indirectly owned by General Electric. Eurobank, another Greek institution, is playing on both ends, as it is interested both in Banc Post and BNP-Dresdner Bank Romania. The National Bank of Greece, the most powerful financial institution on the Greek market, desperately wants to acquire an important segment of the Romanian banking market. This explains its willingness to pay a good price, its first target being Banca Comerciala Romana (the Romanian Commercial Bank – BCR).
As far as Turkish investors are concerned, the Finans Group has taken over Banca Industriala de Credit Industrial si Comercial (the Bank for Industrial and Commercial Credit) this very spring. The Turkish-Romanian Bank (BTR) intends to invest in a subsidiary network of its own.
Germany’s presence in the banking sector is quite insignificant, as the largest German banks opened only subsidiaries here. The only important presence, that is the French-German partnership BNP-Dresdner Bank, failed after one year, saying that profits that can be derived in Romania by company lending operations are not enough.
Turkish and Greek banks made a lot of money especially from monetary operations and that is why they were successful here and now are starting to see the results and expand their activities.