Raiffeisen says its CEE units are well-capitalized

TIRANA, March 3 – Austrian financial group Raiffeisen International, which has branches in Albania, said Monday it remained committed to Central and Eastern Europe and that its numerous Albanian subsidiaries were well-capitalized.
At the same time it warned that some of the region’s economies would contract as a result of the global crisis.
“We’re aware of the situation and we, of course, take it seriously, but we’re not worried about the situation, because we know the region very well,” said Michael Palzer, a Vienna-based spokesman for Raiffeisen, to MarketWatch.
“We define CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) as our business model,” Palzer said. “The region as such is now considered as a risk for obvious reasons, as a consequence of the subprime crisis. It was a crisis that was imported by the West. But one also has to see that the region as such is not very coherent.”
In recent weeks, market concerns have risen about Eastern Europe’s economic woes and the exposure of Western European banks, such as Raiffeisen, to the region. The Eastern European exposure of Austrian banks is about 68% of Austrian gross domestic product; that number includes the exposure of Bank Austria, which is controlled by Italy’s UniCredit.