[ad_1]
In the fall of 1994, when I was a reporter at the Mediafax news agency, I was sent to interview Răzvan Temeşan (photo), president of the BRCE-Romanian Bank for Foreign Trade, the largest bank in Romania at the time. The interview took place at the bank’s then headquarters in Eugen Carada, near BNR.
BRCE was the only bank with international relations during communism, and after the revolution it carried out almost 70% of the country’s exports and imports.
I’m sorry I can’t find the item from then, but after 26 years I still remember that the Rolex in the hand that Temeşan was carrying caught my attention and that I think it was worth as much as two apartments in Bucharest, when the average salary was around. $ 60-80. Temeşan was the strongest banker in Romania, both literally and figuratively because he weighed over 120kg, from the mid-90s, respectively since 1994 when he became BRCE president replacing Dan Pascariu in a change. controversial, the title of a news item in Mediafax of February 18, 1994 (Thursday February 17, 1994 was the change of bank address) “Răzvan Temeşan: I was with Dan Pascariu from 1979 until yesterday” -, and until his fall in the spring of 1997, when he was taken from the bank’s headquarters by prosecutors to be arrested.
Răzvan Temeşan died last week from COVID-19, he also had diabetes.
I don’t know if he was the best banker, but all bankers say of him, including his opponents, that he was a true commercial banker and, to quote Mugur Isărescu, the governor of the NBR, he was a banker with a good international reputation. .
He wanted to make BRCE, which changed its name to Bancorex in 1995, one of the largest banks in the region, in a period of economic and business openness, after the fall of communism. Indeed, since his professional collapse in 1997 and up until recent years, he has accused a national and international political and economic conspiracy of pointing the finger at the World Bank and the IMF, leading to his downfall and the bankruptcy of Bancorex in 1998. /1999.
Ironically, the name Bancorex and the famous Calea Victoriei building, whose construction decision belonged to him, still exist today, although Bancorex, as a bank, was decommissioned in mid-1999.
To join BRCE / Bancorex in 1994, Temeşan joined forces and surrendered to the PDSR, the party that dominated Romania in those years. The state, through FPS, was the main shareholder, and the powerful interior minister of that time, Doru Ioan Tărăcilă, was a member of the general meeting of shareholders. Viorel Hrebenciuc, one of the most influential politicians of the 1990s, was at home at Bancorex. In fact, a news item of April 5, 1997 given by Mediafax, announced that Răzvan Temeşan would become a member of the PDSR.
He attended meetings of the permanent PDSR delegation on Athens Street, where political and economic decisions were discussed. The PDSR executive leadership, led by Adrian Năstase along with Prime Minister Nicolae Văcăroiu and Finance Minister Florin Georgescu, frequently called Mugur Isărescu to the party to discuss the NBR’s currency and currency policies. I don’t know if Temeşan was a fan of Mugur Isărescu, given repeated attempts since then to replace him as governor.
A few weeks ago, Dan Pascariu said that when he left BRCE he left a bank with a balanced balance sheet and a substantial profit.
In the three years he was in charge, Temeşan risked the bank’s balance sheet by making countless loans to anyone who came with a battery (if I remember correctly, the famous fashion designer Cătălin Botezatu was embroiled in a scandal with loans taken by him Bancorex of $ 20 million). The strongest group in Romania in the 90s, George Constantin Păunescu’s GCP, borrowed from Bancorex, the exposure reached $ 300 million, a fabulous amount for those times, as long as the BNR did not dream of having a foreign exchange reserve .
In 2000, after the bankruptcy of Bancorex, George Constantin Păunescu repurchased his bank exposure from AVAB, where all delinquent loans were sent, paying up to $ 20 million.
Regardless of national and international conspiracies, Temeşan ruled Bancorex as its own fiefdom, where PDSR was at home and the capitalists of the time had the door open regardless of what business they did.
With a good international reputation, together with BRCE / Bancorex, Răzvan Temeşan practically saved Romania in the winter of 1996/1997, when the NBR had nothing left in the foreign exchange reserve and we could not spend the winter without foreign exchange for resources energetic. The story goes that in a meeting with Emil Constantinescu, the unexpected president of Romania at the end of 1996, when discussing the dramatic situation of the country left by PDSR, Temeşan would have said that if it receives a free hand, Bancorex will finance all energy imports. What has happened.
But in the spring of 1997, when power changed, Temeşan was ousted and handcuffed by prosecutors from the bank’s headquarters. The bank’s general secretary, Florin Ionescu, assumed the new power, replacing Temeşan.
From Romania’s largest bank, in just 2 years, Bancorex collapsed under the weight of delinquent loans, catastrophic risk management, but also controversial financing of energy imports in 1996/1997. In 1998, before the crash, Bancorex had assets of $ 2.4 billion, which represents 20% of the market, since total bank assets were $ 12 billion.
Bancorex also collapsed because of Temeşan, but also because of what happened after his departure.
The Bancorex bankruptcy cost Romania $ 2 billion, or 10% of GDP at the time (I don’t think more than $ 200 million of non-performing loans that reached AVAB of $ 2 billion were recovered).
A good part of Bancorex was absorbed by BCR, the second bank in the system, which became number one, with a 25% market share and was sold in 2005 to the Austrian group Erste with a total bank valuation of 6,000 millions. euro.
Since its collapse in 1997, Temeşan has not recovered at all, as it is only a banking consultant for those who wanted to open banks in Romania.
It is more than certain that the new generation of bankers does not know who Răzvan Temeşan was, but at least I know of Bancorex, the building in Calea Victoriei that was built on his orders to be the headquarters of the “bank of the third millennium”, as he said the motto. the bank ever since.
[ad_2]
