OTP Bank plans to buy Greek banks’ subsidiaries in Romania

OTP Bank, the largest banking group in Hungary, plans to expand to countries where Greek banks have large subsidiaries, such as Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, but not to Greece, said Laszlo Bencsik, OTP’s deputy director, cited by local Agerpres. The situation in Ukraine is not very promising and the risk costs could grow in the future, but OTP is expecting that the operations in Russia and Ukraine will stabilize by the end of the year. OTP posted a consolidated profit after taxes of EUR 123 million in the second quarter of the year. Between April and June, OTP recorded losses of EUR 493 million, after the Hungarian Government adopted laws meant to protect the customers who took credits in foreign currency. The net interest income decreased by 12% in the second quarter of 2015 to EUR 451 million, whereas the operating expenses dropped by 5% to EUR 312 million. editor@romania-insider.com