TIRANA (Albania), July 4 (SeeNews) – National Bank of Greece (NBG) said on Wednesday it has completed the sale of its wholly-owned subsidiary in Albania to American Bank of Investments (ABI), a unit of Albania's Tranzit.
The transition was concluded following receipt of the required regulatory approvals from Albania’s central bank and the country's competition authority, NBG said in a statement.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
“The successful completion of the transaction, which has taken place in the context of NBG’s Restructuring Plan, increases NBG’s Q1 2018 CET1 Ratio by 11 bps, following the capital impact already booked in Q4 2017 upon signing of the capital accretive transaction,” the bank noted.
NBG Albania started operating in Albania in 1996 as Tirana branch of NBG. In 2012, it became a fully-licensed, independent bank and since then it operated as a 100%-owned subsidiary of NBG.
The assets of NBG Albania amounted to around 37.7 billion leks ($347 million/298 million euro) or 2.62% of the total assets of 16 banks operating in Albania, according to the Q1 2018 report of the country's central bank. The biggest banks in terms of assets in Albania are Banka Kombetare Tregtare (BKT) and Raiffeisen Bank.
ABI is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tranzit, an Albanian non-banking financial institution focused on providing flexible financing options to companies and individuals. ABI is licensed to perform credit and deposit activities, payment services in Albania and abroad as well as other banking activities in accordance with Albanian laws.
NBG has divested its subsidiaries in other countries of Southeast Europe as part of its restructuring plan.
In June 2017, Belgium's KBC Group completed the acquisition of NBG's subsidiary United Bulgarian Bank (UBB) and leasing company Interlease in Bulgaria for a total consideration of 610 million euro ($730 million).
In December, Hungarian banking group OTP said it completed the acquisition of Serbia's Vojvodjanska Banka and NBG Leasing from NBG through OTP Banka Srbija.
(1 euro = 125.413 leks)
Banka Kombetare Tregtare Sh.a. 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