After restructuring the bank's management, getting rid of non-performing loans and going through a complex rebranding process, Nextebank was sold to PineBridge Investments, an American investment fund, majority owned by Asia/Singapore-based Pacific Century Group.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and it is still subject to the approvals of the National Bank of Romania and the Competition Office.

In 2010 Brandient was commissioned to rebrand MKB Romexterra Bank, owned by the Hungarian group MKB, with financial support from the reputed German bank BayernLB. We delivered for MKB Nextebank the corporate, banking and retail visual identity design, the internal communication and the brand engagement sessions. Meanwhile, the new management team of MKB Nextebank redesigned the product portfolio and simplified the bank's procedures.

The purpose of the new brand strategy was to increase the visibility of the bank and give it a modern touch. Romexterra was transformed into a dynamic, urban bank, that would resemble its clients, mostly with liberal professions and entrepreneurial endeavours.

The transaction of MKB Nextebank is a first on the Romanian market since the start of the recession, and it is a remarkable achievement given the strained economy and especially the troubles of the financial sector.

Brandient was involved in other major rebrandings of banks and financial institutions like CEC Bank (the savings house of Romanians since 1865), Patria Credit (the former Capa Finance), Verida and Domenia Credit (new brands operating on the mortgage market).

About Brandient

Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.

About Nextebank

Nextebank was the reinvention of a mid-sized Romanian bank — the former MKB Romexterra, restructured and rebranded by Brandient. In 2015 its majority shareholder, the Emerging Europe Accession Fund, brought the bank together with Patria Credit to operate under a single brand — which Brandient built on the Patria name it had created in 2009 — and the bank became Patria Bank in 2016. All three brands in the chain — MKB Nextebank, Patria Credit and Patria Bank — are Brandient creations: the Nextebank case, the Patria Credit case, the Patria Bank case.