The situation in Greece will affect Romania and Bulgaria, given the fact that the subsidiaries of Greek banks have reduced lending, the report of Japanese lender Nomura said Nomura, partially published on a blog of the paper "Financial Times" (FT).
The terms of the "Vienna Initiative", the agreement concluded in 2009, which forced the parent-banks of Romanian lenders to support their subsidiaries and not to withdraw their capital, has been reversed in the case of Greek financial groups, the Japanese bank and FT journalists note.
"Right now, the Romanian subsidiaries have already been funding their parent banks in Greece for some time", according to the Nomura analysis.
The loans granted by the Greek subsidiaries to their parent banks have contributed to the recent strengthening of the leu and have reduced liquidity on the Romanian market, the report states.
"More specifically, the NBRused these outflows as a method to strengthen the currency by relaxing the control of the foreign exchange policy", Nomura notes.
This means that the capital flows mentioned by the "Vienna initiative" are going the other way, while on an official level, it is assumed that the Greek banks are still committed to maintaining their exposure to Eastern Europe.
A new "Vienna Initiative", which is already being discussed in Europe, would require Greek banks to maintain their commitments towards their subsidiaries of Emerging Europe even if they were to encounter a severe crisis on the domestic market. Such a decision would be hard to enforce, placing new burdens on the Greek banking system which is already "extremely stressed".
Nomura discusses several scenarios, concerning the consequences that the crisis of Greece could have on Romania and Bulgaria.
The least negative scenario would be a severe reduction in lending by the Romanian and Bulgarian
