SocGen's Romanian Unit Jan-Sept Factoring Operations Up 43% to 1.66 Bln Lei (450 Mln Euro)

Out of the total, 1.1 billion lei came from domestic factoring, the remainder was contributed by international factoring, BRD, a unit of French banking group Societe Generale, said in a statement.

BRD estimates the domestic factoring market in 2008 at between 1.8 billion and 2.0 billion euro ($2.4 billion-$2.7 billion) and sees its market share at between 40% and 42%.

Factoring is a service for suppliers of goods or services that includes the purchase of accounts receivable by a factoring company. Factoring includes a wide range of services, including financing against assignment of accounts receivable, administration, management and collection of receivables.

BRD started factoring services in Romania in 1993 and now has 544 clients. Six out of the 40 banks operating in the southeast European country of 21.5 million people offer factoring services as part of their portfolio.

BRD is one of the ten blue-chip companies on the Romanian Stock Exchange, BVB. Its shares last traded down 1.06% at 9.35 lei at 0928 GMT.

BRD reported earlier this month a preliminary net profit of 1.0 billion lei, or 285 million euro, for the first nine months of 2008, 52.2% higher on the year. The bank has more than 2.6 million customers in Romania and operates through 900 branches.

(1 euro = 3.6865 Romanian lei)