Businessman Dinu Patriciu has reached an agreement with Erste Bank, the majority shareholder of BCR, in order to take over the Anglo-Romanian Bank, which is part of the BCR group, banking sources say.
The deal is put at some 100 million euros and is to be completed soon. Patriciu is thus taking one more step on the financial services market after having bought a stock broker this spring, whereas BCR, which 100% owns Anglo-Romanian Bank, gets a welcome injection of cash at a time when financing resources are dwindling fast on the banking markets.
BCR is also expecting to get 244 million euros from the sale of its insurance division, now that all approvals required to finalise the deal have been secured.
Sources on the financial market say that Patriciu had started talks with the Austrians at the end of August, after some of the investors that had already expressed interest had withdrawn from the race.
The bank is interesting to Patriciu partly because of its substantial exposure to countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, including Kazakhstan and Georgia, two countries of interest for the entrepreneur's business.
Kazakhstan is where Kaz Munai Gaz, which bought 75% in Rompetrol from Patriciu last year is registered. With the money he got from this deal he set up an over 1 billion-euro fund in Holland, which should finance the takeover of Anglo-Romanian bank. As the bank is registered in the UK, the sale was contingent upon the approval of the supervisory authority in London that the buyer was required to secure.
The British banking licence and the thirty-five year old brand are precisely two of the most valuable assets of this institution.
Besides its business connections in the CIS and Central and Eastern Europe, banking sources say that Anglo-Romanian Bank can be easily turned into an investment banking and a
