February 4 (SeeNews) - Hungary's OTP Bank plans to buy a majority stake in Moldova's Mobiasbanca from French banking group Societe Generale, Moldovan website Mold-street has reported.
A delegation of OTP Bank will visit Moldova in the coming days in order to negotiate the takeover, Mold-street reported on Friday, quoting unnamed banking sources.
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The signing of a preliminary contract was scheduled for February 1, according to the media report.
OTP is currently not present on the Moldovan market.
In August 2018, OTP signed agreements to buy majority stakes in the Albanian and Bulgarian units of Societe Generale. In December,
Societe Generale said that it has entered into an agreement with a view to sell its Serbian unit to OTP.
Mobiasbanca was set up as an independent bank in 1990.
Societe Generale owns directly a stake of 67.85% in Mobiasbanca, a further 20% is held by Romania's BRD bank, which is part of Societe Generale Group, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development owns 8.84% and minority shareholders have 3.31%, according to figures published on the website of Mobiasbanca.
Eleven commercial banks operated in the country of 3.5 million people as at the end of 2018. Mobiasbanca posted a 301.1 million lei ($17.6 million/15.4 million euro) profit in 2018, ranking third in terms of profit among local lenders.
(1 euro=19.5743 Moldovan lei)