The portfolios of Hungarian lenders will probably continue to deteriorate until the middle of the year, but profitability will improve, Tamas Simonyi, director in charge of Central and Eastern European financial institution transactions at consultancy KPMG, said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Mr Simonyi said that it was a “blessing in disguise” that the Hungarian government was not able to pump money into the economy, and that it was forced to take measures that Western governments are only now facing.
Mr Simonyi added that the support from parent banks played a major role in the capacity of their central and eastern European subsidiaries to overcome the global financial crisis.
Mr Simonyi predicted that in the middle of 2010 default rates could be between 8pc and 12pc in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, between 15pc and 20pc in Romania and Bulgaria, between 25pc and 30pc in Russia and between 35pc and 45pc in Ukraine.