|
| Weather in: London: 16°C Sofia: 23°C New York: 14°C Brussels: 12°C Berlin: 11°C Moscow: 18°C | ||
|
Italian Unicredit Group to Set Up Bulgaria's Megabank
The Bulgarian Post 2007-04-03 10:53:13 Italy's Unicredito and Bank Austria Creditanstalt will merge their three banks to create Bulgaria's biggest bank at the end of the month. The banks, both part of UniCredit Group, said they will complete the legal merger of Unicredito's Bulbank and Bank Austria's HVB Bank Biochim and Hebros on April 27, while the technical consolidation will be completed at the end of June, Reuters news agency reported. The preparations for the merger started last February after Unicredito acquired Germany's HVB that controls BA-CA. The new bank -- Unicredit Bulbank -- has received all required by law approvals and registrations. Its assets will be around $5.46 billion, ensuring a 25 percent market share in the European Union newcomer. It will serve 1.1 million clients with 300 branches, focusing on retail and corporate banking. Currently, the largest bank in Bulgaria is DSK, a unit of Hungary's OTP bank. Its assets stood at 6.6 billion levs at the end of 2006. The three banks merged their leasing units in February. Bulbank, currently Bulgaria's third largest bank, posted a net profit of 77.4 million levs, down from 94.2 million a year earlier due to one-off merger costs, the bank's unconsolidated results for 2006 showed. The profit of HVB Bank Biochim, fifth largest bank, doubled to 42.9 million levs and Hebros, 15th largest, turned to profit of 14.5 million after ending 2005 with a loss. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright 2006- © The Bulgarian Post | |||||
| |||||