Hungary’s OTP Bank bought Vojvođanska Banka, as well as NGB Leasing and the National Bank of Greece’s corporate loan portfolio in Serbia. This is one of the biggest recent banking transactions in the region and it was closed on Friday, the 1st of December in Belgrade. Karanović & Nikolić, in cooperation with the global law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, advised the buyer – OTP Bank, one of the leading banks in Central and Eastern Europe, throughout all of the stages of the acquisition process.
The Karanović & Nikolić team included Darko Jovanović, Ivan Nonković and Mina Srećković. The services performed were the due diligence of Vojvođanska Banka and its affiliates, advising on the transaction documents from the local law perspective, obtaining of regulatory approvals, as well as working on the closing documents and the facilitation of the closing.
This is OTP Bank’s third successful acquisition in this year, after acquisitions in neighboring Croatia and Romania. After the realization of the financial part of the transaction, the company’s presence in Serbia is further solidified, in line with their strategic goal of increasing their market share in the countries in which OTP operates. Hungary’s OTP Bank now has a 5.7% market share in Serbia and is the seventh biggest bank in the country.
