August 17 (SeeNews) - Romanian investment fund SIF Oltenia [BSE: SIF3] said it has signed a deal for the sale of its 6.29% stake in Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR) to Austria's Erste Group [BSE:EBS] for 140 million euro ($159 million) in cash.
Following completion of the transaction, Erste Group’s participation in BCR is set to increase to 99.88%.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
The agreement of sale-purchase of the stake of 1,023,534,303 BCR shares held by the company to the Erste Group was signed on August 16, 2018, the investment fund said in a statement filed with the Bucharest Stock Exchange on Thursday.
First announced at the end of June, the deal is pending approval from the European Central Bank, as well as from SIF Oltenia shareholders.
The purchase will be implemented in a single transaction at a price of 0.136 euro per share. The remaining 0.12%, or 19,830,840 shares in BCR, are held mainly by former and current BCR employees.
BCR was established in 1990, taking over the commercial banking operations of Romania's central bank. In October 2006 Erste Group completed the acquisition of a 61.9% stake in BCR from AVAS (Romanian Authority for Assets Recovery), the EBRD and IFC.
In November 2006 Erste Group acquired a further 7.2% in BCR through an offer made to BCR employees. In 2011 Erste Group acquired a 24% stake in BCR from four of the five SIFs (SIF Banat-Crisana, SIF Moldova, SIF Transilvania, SIF Muntenia – each 6%), in an offer which involved cash and share swap.
SIF Oltenia shares traded flat at 2.1 lei as at 1015 CET on Friday on the Bucharest Stock Exchange. Erste Group shares closed 2.67 lower at 161.95 lei on Thursday.
($=0.8796 euro)