NBG gets EUR 650 mln from selling Romanian subsidiary

The sale of local lender Banca Romaneasca to Hungary’s OTP Group will bring some EUR 650 million worth of liquidity to National Bank of Greece (NBG), the group announced yesterday. NBG and OTP signed a definitive agreement for selling a stake of 99.28% in the local lender Banca Romaneasca and a high-performing loan portfolio. The two groups didn’t disclose the value of this deal. However, NBG announced that the transaction would boost its liquidities by EUR 650 million. The group will recover some EUR 550 million worth of loans granted to its Romanian subsidiary while the other EUR 100 million may be the actual price of the shares sold, according to local Profit.ro. OTP's market share at local level will grow to 4%, following this deal and the lender will enter the top 8 local banks. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of 2018 and needs the approval of Romania’s National Bank (BNR), Hungary’s National Bank and the anti-trust authorities. Credit Suisse was NBG’s financial consultant in this deal while law firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and PeliFilip provided the legal consultancy. Societe Generale Corporate & Investment Banking was the sole financial consultant for OTP Group. editor@romania-insider.com