LONDON, May 12 (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Bank will need more capital if it has to do more to help central and eastern European economies, EBRD President Thomas Mirow said on Tuesday.
"It depends on what our shareholders expect from us. If they want us to do very much more, then the question of a capital increase will be on the table," Mirow told Reuters and Reuters Television in an interview.
Set up at the end of the Cold War in 1991 to help former communist countries adjust to free markets, the EBRD has said it would spend a record 7 billion euros in investment this year to help its region of operation combat the worst financial crisis since the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago.
Mirow said 2 billion euros of that amount has already been committed.
The development bank slashed its GDP forecasts for the region last week to a 5.2 percent contraction in 2009 from a forecast of 0.1 percent growth made only a few months ago.
"We had a disastrous Q4 2008 and a very bad Q1 2009. We see some bottoming out but it's not possible to predict anything better than we did," Mirow said.
He said he was particularly concerned about deteriorating economic conditions in the Baltic states, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia.
Last week, the EBRD said it would invest 432.4 million in the eastern and central European subsidiaries of Italy's UniCredit.
Mirow said similar deals were in the works with Western parent banks in Austria, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and France.
"We are talking to other banks. We have identified 12 parent banks in western Europe," he said.
The EBRD, which operates in 30 countries including Mongolia and Turkey, holds its annual meeting in London on May 15 and 16.
(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn, writing by Sebastian Tong; editing by David Stamp)