Network expansion and retail banking tripled Piraeus Bank’s profit

The lender administered €2.2 billion in assets by the end of September, compared to €972 mln as of 1 January 2007, while the loan portfolio increased by 160 percent, to RON 1.8 bln (€0.53 bln) from €702 mln in December 2006. Piraeus estimates it has a 4.2 percent share of the loan market, and €383 mln on the savings segment, up €90 mln. The lender has opened 46 branches in the first nine months of this year, and currently has a 90-unit network.

Catalin Parvu, General Manager of Piraeus Romania’s Retail Banking and Operations Division, told Business Standard that this year brought an increase in market share and profit, based on which the company will attack the market more aggressively.

“We registered increases in both profit and market share in 2007, which has motivated us to invest more in our national network in order to reach 110 branches by the end of this year [compared to 56 in December 2006] and we are preparing to double the network in 2008, up to 200 units,” Parvu told Business Standard.

Piraeus Bank Romania also operates in a further six European countries: Greece, Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Great Britain, and Ukraine. The Romanian subsidiary was founded in 1995, as Pater Credit Bank, taken over by the Piraeus Bank Group in 2000. Piraeus Bank Romania administered assets worth €1.75 bln by the end of H1 2007, triple from June 2006.

Piraeus Bank Group is the fastest-growing financial group in Greece, with total assets of €40.2 bln as of the beginning of September, almost as much as the assets administered by the entire Romanian banking system at the end of 2006 (€49.7 bln). The group posted a 50 percent increase in net profit in this year’s first nine months, to €512 mln, due to good results on the loan segment and the sale of its Bank of Cyprus shares.