By Boris Groendahl
VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank, which includes listed Raiffeisen International (RIBH.VI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), is on course to meet its forecasts this year despite a global credit crunch, finance chief Patrick Butler said on Monday.
Butler acknowledged some economic imbalances in the region which were a potential risk, but said parallels drawn to Asia before the 1997 crisis were "ill-conceived" because the transformational process in central Europe was different.
"We haven't changed our forecasts," Butler said at the Reuters Central European Investment Summit in Vienna. "We constantly review our strategy and our portfolio and certainly there are cases where we will need to mark to market."
"But certainly we have not experienced any massive setbacks through this. At the moment, we're well on course to perform as anticipated as a group," Butler said.
RZB's Raiffeisen International is eastern Europe's third-largest lender after UniCredit's (CRDI.MI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Bank Austria BACA.VI and Erste Bank (ERST.VI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz). It is active in 16 countries, its main growth assets are in Russia and Ukraine.
Raiffeisen International has forecast at least 750 million euros ($1.07 billion) in net profit this year, a number that most analysts view as conservative.
The bank raised 1.2 billion euros this month in a rights issue that started only days after the impact of the liquidity crisis hit Britain's Northern Rock NRK.L and shook Europe's banking sector.
Credit volumes are growing by more than 20 percent throughout the region, and Butler said Raiffeisen still saw big opportunities for credit growth in a region still enormously underbanked compared to western Europe. Continued...
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