The Romanian Commercial Bank took note of the Competition Council’s public communication regarding its sanctioning in the investigation regarding the procedure for establishing ROBOR, but did not receive the final reasoned decision, and “firmly” rejects the communicated conclusions, which it considers unfounded, both in fact and in law, it is mentioned in a report of the bank sent to the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
On June 7, 2026, the Competition Council issued a press release regarding the sanctioning of 10 banks with fines totaling 3.73 billion lei, for alleged violation of competition rules, namely the provisions of Competition Law no. 21/1996 and of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, consisting of the alleged coordination of conduct through an exchange of confidential and strategic information, in particular regarding price, regarding the level of ROBOR in the framework of the fixing procedure. The fine indicated in respect of Banca Comercială Română is 577.36 million lei.
“BCR has taken note of the Competition Council’s public communication, but states that, at this time, it has not received the authority’s final reasoned decision. BCR firmly rejects the communicated conclusions and considers them unfounded, both in fact and in law. From BCR’s perspective, the Competition Council’s position in this case is all the more surprising given that the same authority has previously analyzed the procedure for establishing the ROBID/ROBOR indices and found, following the investigation closed in 2013, that there was no violation of competition rules. This change in approach raises issues of predictability and consistency of its own administrative practice,” the report states.
According to the cited source, the ROBOR mechanism was and remains a well-known, accessible and transparent mechanism, carried out within a specific sectoral framework, supervised by the National Bank of Romania and governed by rules applicable to the interbank money market issued by the central bank.
“In this context, any claim regarding the existence of an alleged exchange of confidential and strategic information must be analyzed strictly by reference to the concrete framework of the fixing procedure, to the information actually available in the market and to the real obligations applicable to participants. BCR also appreciates that general references to practices sanctioned in other jurisdictions cannot substitute the concrete analysis of the normative, factual and institutional framework applicable to the ROBOR procedure in Romania. Any comparison with other international cases must be relevant, rigorous and applicable to the concrete circumstances of the local market and the ROBOR mechanism”, specify the bank’s representatives.