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Southeast Europe
October 20, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
employees will benefit from being part of an enlarged banking group and we look forward to the timely completion of the transaction,” Megalou said, reads the bank’s press release.
The bank said that the transaction is conditional upon the usual corporate and regulatory approvals, including those of the National Bank of Serbia and the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund. The transaction represents another step towards the implementation of Piraeus Bank’s restructuring plan commitments agreed with the Directorate General of Competition of the European Commission.
The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018, following the receipt of all necessary approvals and is neutral to Piraeus’ CET-1 ratio.
BNP Paribas acted as financial adviser to Piraeus Bank on the transaction, whilst Clifford Chance and Andric Law Office acted as legal counsel.
The owners of Direktna banka are Serbian businessmen Andrej Jovanovic and Bojan Milovanovic. In 2016, the two acquired Kragujevac based KBM Banka/Credy bank from Slovenian
Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor (Nova KBM) and renamed it Direktna banka.
Greek banks, along with those from Austria in par- ticular plus other West European countries, target- ed Southeast Europe for their international expan- sion in the years before the international economic crisis. As of 2008, shortly before the crisis erupted, Greek banks had a market share of over 25% in Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia, and around a 15% market share in Romania and Serbia, a report published by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung shows.
Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, Romania’s sec- ond largest bank by assets, Banca Transilvania, said on September 15 that it expected wrap up ne- gotiations on its purchase of Bancpost, another Greek-owned bank, were expected to be com- pleted by the end of October. US investment funds J.C. Flowers and Warburg Pincus were also re- portedly in talks jointly buy Bancpost and Piraeus Bank Romania.
Also in Romania, National Bank of Greece (NBG) is close to selling Banca Romaneasca to Hungarian banking group OTP, although the deal is understood to have run into difficulties obtaining regulatory approval.
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