February 19 (SeeNews) - Moldova's Public Property Agency (APP) has acquired 63.89% interest in local lender Moldindconbank for 760 million lei ($44.5 million/ 39 million euro), as it prepares to sell the stake in a public auction, data from the Moldovan Stock Exchange showed.
APP has bought 3,172,751 shares of the bank for 239.5 lei each, data from the bourse showed on Monday.
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According to the law, APP is now launching a public auction for the sale of the entire package of Moldindconbank (MICB) shares on the regulated market of the Moldova Stock Exchange.
The deadline for expressions of interest is February 22, bourse documents show.
Bulgaria's Doverie United Holding [BUL:5DOV] said last week that its wholly-owned unit Doverie-Invest has signed a preliminary agreement with APP for the acquisition of 63.89% interest in Moldindconbank. The agreement gives Doverie the right to participate in the public auction for the sale of Moldindconbank's shares.
On January 23, Moldova's central bank BNM said that it has approved the sale of MICB to Doverie. The central bank's prior consent is a condition for taking part in the auction.
This is not Doverie's first attempt to enter Moldova's banking market. In September 2017, the company also received the BNM's prior permission to acquire a package of shares in another Moldovan bank but "for objective reasons that transaction was not carried out," the central bank said at the time.
BNM has been trying to sell the majority stake in MICB since April 2018, when it confiscated it from shareholders that operated in a non-transparent, coordinated way. In October, BNM's board decided to postpone for a further three months the sale of the stake.
Eleven commercial banks operated in Moldova as at the end of 2018. Moldindconbank ranked second in terms of profit - 530 million lei, up from 455.6 million lei in 2017.
Doverie United Holding holds 20 companies operating in 6 industrial branches and located in 15 cities in Bulgaria and elsewhere in Europe.
(1 euro = 19.3158 Moldovan lei)
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