European Commission and IMF salute the support offered by parent banks to their Romanian subsidiaries

UniCredit Group, Société Générale, Alpha Bank, Volksbank International and Piraeus Bank). It was the fifth country meeting of the European Banking Coordination Initiative for Romania, following those held in 2009 and 2010. Participants expressed satisfaction that, throughout the IMF - EU program period, parent banks have largely honored their exposure commitments to Romania at group level. Furthermore, parent banks also met their commitment to provide ex-ante additional capital for 2009 and 2010, so that the capital adequacy ratio of their subsidiaries has remained above 10% throughout the program period. Banks will continue to maintain solvency well above the level of 10%.
Participants also reiterated the key role the European Bank Coordination Initiative has played in helping Romania withstand the peak phase of the economic and financial downturn. Banks collectively expressed interest in appropriately maintaining or expanding exposure to Romania. In the context of the EBCI participants agreed to regular discussions to take forward these issues.
During the meeting, participants were briefed on the progress in fulfilling the policy conditions under the current financial assistance program. Furthermore, participants were also informed about the main policy conditions included in the new two-year precautionary financial assistance program, requested by Romania and amounting to about five billion Euro.