Banca Transilvania plans to buyback 5% of shares on the Bucharest Stock Exchange

Romania's fifth lender by assets Banca Transilvania announced it will buyback 5 percent the most of its shares on the capital market until the end of April this year, following a shareholding decision last year, according to a release sent to the bourse.

The bank will buyback about 53 million shares at a maximum price of 4 lei per share to pay debts convertible in stocks.

The lender's shares came back on the bourse today. The stock last traded on September 15 2008 and were since suspended to carry out a share capital increase to 1.06 billion lei and consolidate the nominal value from 0.10 lei to 1 leu.

During this interval the market lost a medium 45 percent while the BET-FI index slumped 56 percent. Yet, the BET index had a smoother fall of only 38 percent as TLV shares were taken into account with a 0 percent variation.

The bank made last year nine month net profit of 396.63 million lei, while revenues nudged up 74 percent after the bank sold its stake in local insurer Asiban.

Revenues reached 2.93 billion lei over 2007 nine-month 1.68 billion lei. Spending rose 61 percent in the first three quarters last year to 2.45 billion lei from 1.52 billion lei in the same period the previous year.

Some 223 million lei of the net profit were received from the sale of Asiban, a contribution without which the lender's profit would have been of only 173.5 million lei.
Assets increased 18.7 percent to 16.47 billion lei, accounting for 85 percent of the whole target on assets for 2008. The credit portfolio also advanced 33 percent to 11.55 billion lei at the end of September.

Shares of the lender are listed at the first tier of the bourse in Bucharest under the symbol TLV. The trading price today stood at 1.10 lei per share which gives the company a market value of 1.16 billion lei.

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