According to an article in the Financial Times, OTP CEO Sandor Csanyi has stated that OTP may couple with a large European financial institution to bid for BAWAG. ‘It is not so far from a state-owned bank, BAWAG is a big retail bank and what we see from the outside tells us we could manage it more efficiently.’
The troubled Austrian BAWAG, which is being sold off by its owner, trade union federation OeGB, in the wake of the Refco bankruptcy scandal. At the end of 2005, BAWAG reported assets of EUR 58bn and equity of EUR 1.64bn, and had some 1,500 branches.
Our view: This latest news seemingly contradicts earlier comments from OTP’s CEO that, whilst the bank continues to seek targets in eastern Europe, expansion in western Europe would be premature. The bank is currently on a list of some 50 interested financial institutions that are looking over BAWAG and we do not see a good reason to expect OTP to be among the short-list of favourites yet. The news had little impact on the stock price yesterday as the bank was up 1.6%.