CEDER 2023 in review: Banks still solid in Romania

Laurențiu Lazăr, Managing Partner and Head of Investment at Colliers, Romania: “Let's keep in mind right now that the banks are solid.”

One of the topics discussed at CEDER 2023 was the possibility that the issues the banking sector is facing in the US would impact the local economy, as well. During the market presentation held by CBRE at the beginning of the conference, the presenters pointed out that although a crisis is in view, Romania has the advantage of a delayed impact of the economic crisis, which provides more time and data to understand what needs to be done.

After referencing the case of the Silicon Valley Bank in California, Robert Neale, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Portland Trust said that “the global issues with the US banking are going to affect Europe. They normally do. What goes on in New York and London generally affects the rest of Europe and the rest of the world.”

Later in the discussion, Laurențiu Lazăr pointed out that in regard to the banking sector, there haven’t been any issues so far in Romania. He said: “We haven't seen quite a major distressed project so far, [...] even if we had war in Ukraine, inflation, other aspects which affected us. Still banks are giving loans. We just closed a loan of about 15 million.” He added, however, that the banks are looking in much more detail before granting a loan.

Regarding loans, Marian V. Popa, Managing Director for Romania at Globalworth mentioned that the banks have additional power to choose proper clients. On an optimistic note, he added: “This is obviously dependant on us – how good we are taking care of [our] portfolio, how good the occupancy rate is in order to be a solid client to the banks; but the offers received from local investors or loans from local banks are far better than ones showing up from the rest – the difference can be up to 10 points.”