Banca Transilvania, the second-biggest lender in Romania, is close to signing an agreement to takeover Bancpost, the local subsidiary of Greek group EFG Eurobank. Once completed, this deal will take Banca Transilvania to a market share of over 16%, very close to the market leader BCR.

Eurobank has been pursuing exclusive negotiations with Banca Transilvania for the potential sale of its local subsidiaries Bancpost, ERB Retail Services IFN and ERB Leasing IFN.

“During the last few weeks there has been significant progress towards a positive outcome and the negotiations have almost been finalized, as parties are completing final formalities for the signing of an agreement,” Banca Transilvania announced in a report on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.

“The senior management teams of both ERB and BT would like to re-affirm their commitment to execute a fair and beneficial transaction for all their stakeholders and reassure that the signing of the transaction is estimated for the end of November 2017 and will be announced publicly as soon as the remaining formalities will be finalized,” reads the note to investors.

Banca Transilvania is the second biggest bank in Romania by assets. At the end of 2016, it had net assets of RON 51.8 billion and a market share of 13.15%, according to official data from Romania’s National Bank (BNR).

Bancpost is also a top ten lender, with assets of RON 11.6 billion and a market share of just under 3% at the end of 2016.

Banca Transilvania also announced recently that it will buy a significant stake in Moldova’s third largest bank.

editor@romania-insider.com