Three months after forming
BNP Paribas Personal Finance, a division focused on consumer and
mortgage finance with an estimated 23 million clients, BNP Paribas
says it is merging other subsidiary units to form national consumer
finance champions in Portugal, Belgium and
Poland.

The French bank is bringing together the country units of its
specialist consumer finance arm Cetelem with LaSer, a 50:50 joint
venture with the second-largest French retail chain, Galeries
Lafayette. LaSer specialises in card-based loyalty schemes and
personal loans, and says it now has 10 million registered
customers, employs over 9,000 people and achieved a turnover of
€1.9 billion ($2.94 billion) in 2007.

In Portugal, Cetelem Portugal will acquire LaSer’s Credifin
subsidiary, forming the country’s largest player with €1.27 billion
in outstandings. In Poland, LaSer’s Sygma Bank will buy Cetelem
Poland, an entity with 1,450 staff and €710 million in
outstandings. Pro rata, the combined unit had a strong year in
2007, with loans up 90 percent, well above the market average of 55
percent, according to BNP Paribas.

BNP Paribas’s Personal Finance division, which looks after Cetelem
along with its UCB mortgage unit, benefited from a 17.2 percent
rise in outstandings in 2007, from €80.7 billion to €94.6 billion.
Growth was bigger outside of France than inside it: Cetelem’s
French outstandings were up 7 percent but international business
was up 20 percent. UCB’s mortgage book grew 8 percent in France but
30 percent outside.

The French group is hoping the consolidation and streamlining of
subsidiaries will help it reach €160 billion in outstandings by
2010.

In 2007, Cetelem pursued a vigorous expansion strategy in emerging
countries through both organic growth – it set up a ‘green field’
operation in Russia – and external growth, such as successful
acquisitions of Jet Finance in Bulgaria and BGN in Brazil.

Overall, BNP Paribas is targeting to add a further 20 million
retail banking and consumer finance customers by the end of 2010 as
it looks to become a major global banking player (see Advantage BNP Paribas).