Polish Enterprise Fund becomes Credisson shareholder

Polish investment fund Polish Enterprise Fund, one of the leading funds in Romania, could become a shareholder of consumer finance company Credisson, following a 10-15 million euro investment.

This investment, which will help Credisson develop on a market whose growth is just beginning, means the fund will get several tens of percentage points in the company. Polish will therefore become one of the top three shareholders of Credisson in terms of interest, along with Swedish Oresa Ventures and the company's chief executive Florin Andronescu.

The officials of Enterprise Investors, the manager of Polish Enterprise Fund, and those of Oresa Ventures did not care to comment on the information about the deal.

Several months back, however, Jacek Siwicki, managing partner of Enterprise Investors and Lucian Perl, the fund's representative in Romania, told Ziarul Financiar in an interview that Polish Enterprise Fund was targeting two investments worth 20 million euros together on the Romanian market this year.

Furthermore, Enterprise Investors yesterday announced it would organise a news conference on October 7 to provide details about "a major financial investment in a Romanian company."

If the deal with Credisson comes through, this will be Polish's second investment in Romania. The fund has been one of the most significant shareholders of mobile telephony operator Orange Romania for a number of years following an about 20 million euro investment.

The other potential target of Polish Enterprise this year was a retailer, Flanco, whose shareholder structure resembled Credisson's. The deal with Flanco was closed not long ago (last week), but the buyer was another fund, DBG, whose main backer is Deutsche Bank. Credisson was established two years ago, as a spin-off taking over Flanco's consumer finance business. The two companies had the same shareholders until this summer. It is about Oresa Ventures (47%), Danube Fund, a Greek investment fund (33%) and Florin Andronescu, Flanco's founder (20%).

Danube Fund sold its interest in both companies to Oresa Ventures this summer, which, along with Florin Andronescu, started talks with other potential financial investors to back the growth of the two companies with their cash. Credisson is the first consumer finance company in Romania and was established as a result of the favourable macroeconomic conditions (the stabilisation of the domestic currency, the interest decline) and of the market growth potential.

The company estimates to grant 100 million euro loans this year.

Polish Enterprise Fund is also the author of a success story in Poland's consumer finance sector. It invested several tens of millions of euros in a consumer credit company, Lukas, which it later sold for more than 200 million euros to French Credit Agricole Bank.

Polish, Oresa Ventures and Florin Andronescu will apply a similar strategy in Credisson's case, a company they will steer towards growth in the next few years and sell it to a financial group like AIG, GE Consumer Finance or Citibank.
laurentiu.ispir@zf.ro