April 20 (SeeNews) - United Bulgarian Bank said on Thursday that its shareholders have approved a dividend payout of 97.9 million levs ($53.8 million/50 million euro), which represents 88% of the bank's 2016 net profit.
The remaining 13 million levs will be held as retained earnings, UBB said in a statement.
"To us – the Executive Management and the Board of Directors of UBB - the year 2016 is yet another successful year, during which the Bank has irrefutably proved its position as one of the leading banking institutions in Bulgaria - displaying upward growth trend and high level of shareholder profitability," Stilian Vatev, CEO of United Bulgarian Bank said in the statement.
In 2016, UBB distributed 257.8 million levs as dividend from its 2015 net profit and from profit for previous years.
According to data from Bulgaria's commercial registry, UBB's capital is divided into 75,964,082 shares with a nominal value of 1 lev each.
In December, Belgium's KBC Group said it had entered into a definitive agreement with the National Bank of Greece (NBG) for the acquisition of NBG's 99.91% stake in UBB and its 100% stake in leasing company Interlease for a total consideration of 610 million euro ($642 million).
Bulgaria's central bank is expected to approve the transaction by mid-2017. The completion of the deal is expected to take about a year, as it is a subject to regulatory approval also from Bulgaria's Financial Supervision Commission and authorisation by the National Bank of Belgium/the European Central Bank, and anti-trust approval.
UBB was Bulgaria's fifth largest bank by assets as of February 2017, according to data from the country's central bank.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)
United Bulgarian Bank AD is among the biggest banks in SEE. You can download our SEE Top 100 ranking
here or subscribe to our free Top 100 newsletter
here