Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), the largest bank on the Romanian market, posted a €546m loss for the first nine months of 2014. The lender, which recorded a net profit of €127m for the same period last year, has spent the last several months removing non-performing loans (NPL) from its balance sheet, which it says impacted its profit margins. Costs related to NPL hit €911m between January and September.
“The net result in the first nine months of this year was materially impacted by significant increase in risk provisions, as we continued to work hard toward extensive clean-up of our NPL portfolio. By year-end our aim is to reduce the NPL portfolio by a quarter up to a half, depending on market conditions,” Tomas Spurny, the bank’s CEO, was quoted as saying by Business Insider.
BCR, a part of Austria’s Erste Group, is reportedly in talks to sell approximately €91m worth of bad loans. The bank offloaded €226m in July.
