Bank Austria Creditanstalt (BA-CA) intends to merge its Romanian subsidiary HVB Bank Romania with Banca Tiriac, Romania’s 11th-largest bank headquartered in Bucharest.
BA-CA and Ion Tiriac have reached a pre-agreement in this regard. The merger will create a new bank under the name “HVB Tiriac”. Per terms of the agreement, Bank Austria Creditanstalt will hold over 50T of the shares in HVB Tiriac and will have full responsibility for controlling the business of HVB Tiriac.
“Romania is the strategic focus of our bank. We thus keep our promise of strengthening our presence in this country at an early stage of its convergence with Europe. This gives us a significant lead over our direct competitors”, says Erich Hampel, Chief Executive Officer of BA-CA.
The newly created bank will be Romania’s fourth-largest bank with 72 offices and nearly 720,000 customers. Further, the merger will increase BA-CA’s market share in Romania to 7.5%, which BA-CA has plans to increase “swiftly beyond” 10%, the firm said in a news release.
On the new entities moniker, Hampel said: “We are proud of including the name Tiriac in our logo. The name Tiriac is associated with success and dynamic growth, not only in Romania but also in the rest of the world.”
“The two banks fit together perfectly. With this merger, we are able to further benefit from the dynamic Romanian financial market development. I was reluctant to sell Banca Tiriac but am very excited with the project of merging with HVB Bank Romania. I am very proud of the achievements accomplished by the management and the 1,100 employees of the bank which bears my name. Alongside with our 685,000 customers, they are the real value of Banca Tiriac”, commented Ion Tiriac.