OTP Bank has asked Uzbekistan to delay a deal that would see Hungary’s largest lender purchase a majority stake in Ipoteka Bank, Chairman and CEO Sandor Csanyi told Bloomberg.
OTP’s share price has plunged almost 30% since Russia on Feb. 24 invaded Ukraine, Hungary’s neighbor to the east. Csanyi, speaking in Ljubljana on Monday, cited the uncertainty created by the war as the reason to postpone the purchase of a 75% stake in Ipoteka, a deal first announced in September.
“The acquisition was ready for signing when war broke out in Ukraine,” Csanyi told Bloomberg on sidelines of Tashkent Investment Forum.
Back in June 2019, it was reported that the government’s stake in Ipoteka-Bank would go below 50% before 2023 and that the bank would be transformed and privatized with the help of the International Finance Corporation.
In September 2021, at an economic forum in Tashkent, Deputy PM Jamshid Kuchkarov announced the sale of a 75% stake in the state-owned Ipoteka Bank to the Hungarian OTP Bank saying that the deal would be completed in two months.
