OTP Bank is interested in purchasing the nationalized Sense Bank. If this agreement is concluded, then the Hungarian bank could become the fourth largest in terms of net assets in Ukraine. “Economic Truth” writes about this with a link to its own sources.
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Two ED interlocutors involved in negotiations on the sale of banks confirmed that there is indeed interest among Western banking groups in state-owned banks. At least one of them is Sense Bank, which the Hungarian group OTP Bank Plc., which already operates on the Ukrainian market, wants to acquire.
The Ukrainian subsidiary of OTP refused to respond to journalists’ requests regarding the potential agreement, noting that “we are not authorized to comment on the group’s intentions.”
If OTP's interest is real, then the potential sale of Shift Bank may face certain difficulties, since the Hungarian group is still operating in Russia. For this, NAPC even included OTP Bank in the list of companies sponsoring the war.
In addition, the publication names another candidate for the purchase of Sense Bank – the investment company Dragon Capital. The Poles, the Grupa Polsat Plus corporation, also showed interest in the former Alfa-Bank, but then the agreement was not approved by the regulator. Unofficially, the NBU explained that the Polish investor was supposedly supposed to act as the nominal owner of the bank, and the agreement was really an attempt by Fridman and Aven to keep the Ukrainian asset in their ownership.
UP notes that the interest in Sense Bank is quite large , but the interest of investors in Ukrgasbank looks less realistic due to the negative trail – the bank is remembered for its money laundering schemes, for which law enforcement is pursuing its former head, Kirill Shevchenko, who, after working at Ukrgasbank, became the head of the NBU.
We would like to remind you that it was previously reported that the state-owned Ukrgasbank and Sense Bank are ready to be bought by foreign investors.
