Greece's Piraeus Bank intends to sell its wholly-owned subsidiaries in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia as part of a plan to reduce its foreign exposures, according to reports from Greek media, SEE News writes .
Piraeus Plan "includes lowering bank problematic loans below 20 billion of euros by 2020 from 33.3 billion euros in the first quarter of this year and its non-performing loans with a delay of more than 90 days to about 8 billion of euros from 23 billion euros at the end of March, Greek newspaper "Kathimerini" announced on Wednesday, citing a news release from the Reuters agency earlier.
"Until the end of 2020, it is expected that the total assets of the group will be reduced to 70 billion euros," said Piraeus Bank in a statement on its website introducing its development strategy.The lender will make a disciplined review of all existing businesses in order to maximize resources in areas where Piraeus historically has had a dominant position, according to the strategy summary.
"This will include a simplified group structure and effective cost-rationalization measures as well as further optimization of our branch network and investments aimed at digitalisation," Piraeus added.
Bank of Piraeus in Albania
The Bank of Piraeus owns a Tirana Bank subsidiary in Albania. According to the data of the Banking Association at the end of the first quarter 2017, the Bank of Tirana had assets worth of ALL 80 billion, or 5.6% of the total banking system, being the country's fifth largest bank by assets.
Its loan portfolio was ALL 29.5 billion, or 5% of the total. The bank held 62 billion ALL, or 5.2% of the total.
For the first quarter, the bank declared a profit of international standards of 286 million ALL.
Greek-owned banks were quite aggressive by 2010, especially in terms of lending. Then they gradually stepped down as a result of the growth of non-performing loans on the one hand and the crisis in Greece on the other. In 2010, the Bank of Tirana occupied almost 10% of the total assets and 14% of the total loan. In 2013, this weight dropped to about 8%, both for assets and deposits, to fluctuate around 5-5.6% at present.
Currently, the three Greek banks (Alpha bank, Tirana and NBG) own 13.7% of total banking system assets, from almost 24% until 2010. Especially after the Greek crisis, Greek-owned banks did not show ff interest to expand in the region and have declared their plans to reduce exposure in the Balkans./Oculus News