Many of the banks with a less than 3% market share lost ground in recession year 2009 due to either freezing or significantly slowing down lending due to diminished funding from parent banks.
Turkish-held Garanti was among the exceptions, being one of the most aggressive players on the segment of small banks, and making up a little over 1% of the market's balance sheet assets, from 0.6% in 2008.
Banca Carpatica, a bank with Romanian capital, also boosted its market share from 0.8% to 1%. In both cases, the rise in market share saw the banks post net financial losses, but the two banks are in different situations: Garanti is pursuing an expansion plan with support from its Turkish parent bank, whilst Carpatica is affected by the lack of a strong investor in its shareholder structure, and is waiting for a 25 million-euro share capital increase by April.
Portuguese bank Millennium also gained 0.2% of the market, boosting its share to 0.6%, but continued to see losses after its second full year of operations on the Romanian market.
Just outside the top 10 were Greek-held Piraeus Bank and Banca Romaneasca - NBG, in that order, with both banks seeing their market shares shrink after coming very close to the 3% mark in 2008.
Many of the banks with a less than 3% market share lost ground in recession year 2009 due to either freezing or significantly slowing down lending due to diminished funding from parent banks.
Turkish-held Garanti was among the exceptions, being one of the most aggressive players on the segment of small banks, and making up a little over 1% of the market's balance sheet assets, from 0.6% in 2008.
Banca Carpatica, a bank with Romanian capital, also boosted its market share from 0.8% to 1%. In both cases, the rise in market share saw the banks post net financial losses, but the two banks are in different situations:
