Austria's UNIQA Wraps up Takeover of Romanian Insurer Unita

"The acquisition of Unita marks a major step forwards for us in our expansion into eastern Europe. […] We will be discussing our plans for further development of Unita with local management in the coming days and will jointly discuss the ideal strategy for utilising the high potential for growth," UNIQA said in a statement.

Unita, the fourth-biggest insurer in Romania, operates entirely in property insurance. It has been majority-owned by the Vienna Insurance Group since 2001. The company has a market share of around 6.5% and manages more than 550,000 customers. Its premium income grew by 85% last year to 142 million euro ($180.6 million).

Preliminary data of Romania's insurance regulator, CSA, has shown that the country's insurance market grew by a nominal 22.32% on the year to 4.42 billion lei ($1.5 billion/1.2 billion euro) in gross written premiums in the first half of 2008. It will reach some 7.5 billion euro in gross written premiums in 2017, up from approximately 2.15 billion euro at the end of last year, according to the regulator.

($ = 0.7862 euro)