The insolvency of major retailers, such as SPAR, Ultra Pro Computers and Trident, badly hit by the crisis and by the aggressive expansion of international store chains, is freezing millions of euros in loans granted by major banks such as UniCredit, Romexterra and ING.

Bank bailiffs that are fighting to collect more than 10 million euros from the store chains that have gone insolvent this year have their hands tied now, because once the insolvency procedure has been started, all debts of such companies to suppliers and banks are frozen. Banks have an advantage compared with the suppliers of these networks: they requested collateral from retailers when they agreed to lend them the money.

"Court and bank bailiffs can no longer do anything as soon as the debtor company goes insolvent, because any action to sue or to subject to compulsory execution is suspended," says Dorina Gont, spokesperson of the Chamber of Court Bailiffs by the Bucharest Court of Appeals.

Banks are the biggest lenders of store chains, because local retailers have financed most of their expansion projects with loans over the last few years in order to keep up with the development of the international networks. In turn, suppliers say that the taxes they paid to the operators to get their products on shelves have helped store networks expand, too.

Usually banks take stores or shopping centres they finance as collateral. Yet, given the current situation on the market, such assets can be converted into cash in a very long time, because of the lack of buyers.

The last major retailer to go insolvent, Trident, bet on real estate in the past two years, investing approximately 15 million euros in the opening of the Trident Shopping Center in Sibiu. At the end of 2008 it announced the signing of a 10 million-euro loan agreement with Romexterra Bank to finance part of this project.