Hungarian OTP Bank, a Turkish bank and businessman Miodrag Kostic, who already owns two banks, are all interested in acquiring Komercijalna Banka – the Vecernje Novosti daily finds out from an unofficial sources.
In the last few days, the topic of the sale of Komercijalna Banka, in which the Serbian state has a 41.7% share, has been on everybody’s lips. Another shareholder in the bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) announced that Komercijalna Banka “would be privatized very soon”.
“I believe that everybody would be very surprised how quickly we are going to announce the beginning of privatization of Komercijalna Banka”, said senior banker at EBRD, Aleksandra Vukosavljevic.
Immediately after Vukosavljevic’s statement, the Serbian PM, Ana Brnabic confirmed that the government has been talking to the EBRD and IFC (which owns 10% of Komercijalna Banka) and that the privatization process would have to start before the end of 2017.
If the privatization does not begin before the end of 2017, the Serbian state would have to pay out the bank’s two other shareholders close to 252 million EUR, according to the 2006 agreement. Back then, the EBRD recapitalized Komercijalna Banka with 70 million EUR. Also, IFC invested 40 million EUR in Komercijalna Banka, as did DEG Fund (20 million) and Swedish fund Svedfond (10 million EUR).
Despite these investments, the amount of 252 million EUR is certainly bigger than the amount that the aforementioned institutions invested in the bank to date. Currently, the bank’s stock exchange value is estimated to be 30.69 billion dinars, and the bank’s shares are selling at 1,825 dinars a pop.
The London-based investment consultants, Nomura International, which are chosen as the official privatization advisors in August 2015, will determine the way in which the bank will be privatized.
Also, it is expected for the bank to have a new executive board chairman since the last chairman, Alexander Picker, resigned in late September. The National Bank of Serbia needs to give the green light to the appointment of the new chairman of Komercijalna Banka.
(Vecernje Novosti, 11.11.2017)
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