Romania’s second-largest listed bank Banca Transilvania BATR.BX reported on Tuesday a drop in net profit to 61.9 million lei ($21 million) in 2009, short of the 84 percent fall to 65.1 million lei which was forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll earlier this week.The six banks and brokerages polled had expected the sharp fall in profits due to bad debt provisions and a slowdown in lending.
Gross operating profit before provisions was 610 million lei, up 96 percent on the previous year, it said in a statement, while the bank’s cost-to-income ratio improved to 55 percent from 70 percent the previous year.
„We’ve made the gross profit we committed to … in a challenging and difficult economic environment that marred the whole year,” the bank’s general director Robert Rekkers said in a statement in Romanian.
