OTP Bank, Hungary’s biggest retail bank and one of the final competitors in the privatization process of the Romanian Savings House-CEC, announced on Monday that it abandoned its bid for Austrian bank Bawag, according to Portfolio.hu.
Bawag is the third biggest bank in Austria and its takeover by OTP would have marked the first investment on Western European banking market for the Hungarian company.
Bawag has sparked the interest of several local and international investors. Analysts evaluate it at over 2 billion euro.
Bawag is too big for OTP to buy... and not a target in line with OTP’s strategy”, Wood&Co. analyst Jiri Stanik is quoted as saying.
OTP Bank and the National Bank of Greece are the two finalists in the privatization process of CEC, the last big target to be privatized in the Romanian banking sector.
