Romanian banking market’s winners and losers in late 2003. The result of the increasingly harsher competition out there is showing even at the top of the ladder: Raiffeisen Bank moved up to the third place, adding 2.1 points to its market share, displacing Casa de Economii si Consemnatiuni (Romanian Savings Bank – CEC), which saw its slice of the market lose 2.2 points. The losers include the market leader itself, Banca Comerciala Romana (Romanian Commercial Bank – BCR), which shed 2 percentage points, so that its share of the market fell to 29.4%. Romania’s largest bank totalled 4.3bn euros in assets at the end of last year, NBR statistics show.
The second leading player, BRD, also saw its market share shrink by 0.2%. This happened despite an increase in BRD’s assets from 1,830 to 1,945 million euros. The most spectacular asset increase was that of Raiffeisen Bank, 1.5 times, to 1,058 million euros.
Therefore the top three players on Romania’s banking market in late 2003 were BCR – 29.4% of the total system assets, BRD – 13.3% and Raiffeisen Bank – 7.2%. ZF