Romania's Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) is to get a big cash boost from its owner, the Austria based Erste Group. BCR will receive over EUR 110 million from Erste as a capital increase. An Erste Group representative confirmed the story yesterday (November 7 ), which first appeared in Austrian newspaper WirtschaftsBlatt.

Romania's largest lender by assets, BCR widened its loss to EUR 172 million in the first nine months of this year, after a profit of EUR 16.1 million in the same period of last year. BCR's risk provisions went up considerably, to almost EUR 600 million, an increase of over EUR 200 million. However, the lender did manage to reduce its quarterly loss in Q3 this year, compared to the previous quarter. Erste announced last month that risk costs were expected to peak this year in Romania, according to Reuters news agency.

The group's total assets declined by 0.5 percent, to some EUR 16.8 billion, but still cover some 20 percent of the Romanian banking market. BCR representatives have recently said that they expect the bank to return to profitability in 2013. “Aside from improving our cost base, BCR Group will focus on systematic pursuit of improvements concerning commercial capabilities, operational excellence and asset quality. These focused measures will deliver sustainable results,” said BCR's CEO Tomas Spurny on the publishing of bank's end of Q3 results just over a week ago.

editor@romania-insider.com