Austria's Erste Bank, central Europe's second biggest lender, is not planning large acquisitions in years to come and is not interested in BayernLB, Chief Executive Andreas Treichl told Reuters.
Erste Bank, with a market capitalisation of over 13 billion euros, has been scooping up banks across central and eastern Europe in recent years, and its reach now extends from Austria and the Balkans to the Ukraine. Asked where he would like to buy now, Treichl, whose last acquisition was the Prestige bank in the Ukraine in late 2006, said: "Nowhere".
"We don't want to make any large acquisitions at this point in time because one of our strategies is to maintain the manageability of the bank as it is now, therefore we give it a very good thought before enlarging our bank," said Treichl, who also confirmed Erste's 2008 and 2009 outlook.
Some 120 million people were living in the countries where Erste was active and the bank had a market share of 15 percent.
"We believe that with our retail banking we can push that market share up to over 20 percent," said Treichl. Erste did not even need to steal customers away from other banks to see "dramatic" growth of its base, as some 20 million people in the region were still without bank accounts. "We are in a very good position to get a big slice of that cake. We can really create some value in that market because we know what we are doing." Treichl was especially cautious about Ukraine and Serbia, whose future political path was somewhat uncertain..
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