About 200 clients bought 25 kilograms of gold worth about 750,000 euros from Piraeus, the only local bank providing this service, in less than two months.
Piraeus has been selling gold as coins - British sovereigns or bars ranging from five grams to one kilogram through 20 branches in Bucharest and big cities since October. Besides BCR, which buys gold from customers, no other bank is currently conducting gold operations.
Some clients chose to buy in several stages. One of them bought four kilograms of gold worth about 120,000 euros. The biggest individual transaction with gold stood at 2.5 kilograms.
"We expected a slower start. We were surprised by the interest in coins, which were not bought by collectors only," says Alina Piciorea, head of the corporate and retail sales department of Piraeus Bank's Treasury.
The bank sold 200 22-carat gold coins, each of which weighing 7.98g. The bars are 24 carat each, with a 999.9% purity. Piraeus gets its gold from Credit Suisse, one of the biggest players on this market in the region.
"There probably are rich Romanians who are advised to buy gold. Gold is regarded as a shelter asset, which maintains its price during times of crisis. However, I think it is a mistake to buy gold now, when the price is at its all-time peak," says Dragos Cabat, financial analyst and member of the CFA Romania board.
Piraeus sells the gold as any other product to its retail clients, through the offices included in this program. If looking at yesterday's quote displayed by the bank, 129 RON per gram of gold, the smallest ingot (5 grams) was available for 645 RON. A one-kilogram bar could be bought for 129,000 RON (about 30,300 euros). NBR calculated a price of 109.5 RON per gram of gold yesterday based on quotes on the international markets. BCR was buying gold at 74.9 RON per gram yesterday.
Gold quote
