OTP made an offer to buy a foreign bank on Thursday, Sándor Csányi, the bank’s CEO, announced at the company’s annual general meeting on Friday. If the offer is accepted, it will be the largest acquisition in OTP’s history. All that was revealed about the bank was that it is located within the European Union, reports Portfolio.
After the general meeting, Portfolio tried to ask Csányi in which country OTP would expand. Csányi said: they looked at a large German and a large Austrian bank, and the Polish banking market has been under investigation for years, but the problem of foreign currency borrowers has not yet been clarified there. The OTP recently withdrew from Romania, according to Csányi, with bad taste. From these it can be concluded that it is not a Polish or Romanian bank.
In addition to the acquisition, it was revealed at OTP’s general meeting that only HUF 150 billion of last year’s 990 billion HUF after-tax profit will be distributed to the owners, and the company will keep the rest. Why? – asked Csányi, and then announced that they would buy a foreign bank from it.
HUF 150 billion means a HUF 535.7 dividend per share. OTP, on the other hand, also has its own shares, and the dividends on these are also distributed to the other owners, who thus receive HUF 539.9 per share.
In addition, the general meeting authorized the management of OTP to purchase up to a maximum of 70 million own shares. Today, OTP has 280 million shares, which means that the company can potentially buy a quarter of them. (Of course, even the MNB must approve this). Such a purchase of own shares may be necessary because if OTP buys another bank, it may have to pay with its own shares.
At the general meeting, it was discussed that the state banks in Ukraine will soon be privatized, and OTP, which is still present on the Ukrainian market, may use its capital there to buy one of the state banks, or a part of one of them. In addition, they would expand further in Uzbekistan.
The stock exchange price of OTP shares jumped from 17,400 forints to around 17,600 forints following the news of the purchase of the foreign bank.
