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Piraeus Bank bought Geniki

20 October 2012 / 15:10:20  GRReporter
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On Friday, Piraeus Bank announced that it has bought 99.08% of Geniki Bank's stocks from the French bank Société Générale. Chairman of the Board of Piraeus Michalis Sallas said that after the purchase of selected parts of the assets and liabilities of the Agricultural Bank, Piraeus Bank will continue to play an important role in the restructuring of the Greek banking system, and the acquisition of Geniki will improve the capital and funding sources of Piraeus.

The main points of the agreement are as follows:

The total investment of Société Générale, amounting to 444 million euro, is subject to a positive update to the date of the transaction's completion, based on the net asset value of Geniki on 30.09.2012. This amount will be deposited in the year of completion of the transaction and it consists of two parts. The first is the recapitalization of Geniki through a deposit against a future increase in the share capital totalling 281 million euro, as determined by the National Bank of Greece. The second is to cover bonds issued by Piraeus Bank, by Société Générale, totalling 163 million euro (with a possible positive update) which will allow access or capital increase, resulting in the acquirement of 0.5% of the total common shares of Piraeus Bank from Société Générale after the recapitalization. Or (if the recapitalization is not completed by mid-2014) they will be automatically converted into Tier 1 capital bonds, with a permanent write-down mechanism.

100% of the shares held by Société Générale and the claims of Société Générale, corresponding to the prepayment against future increase in share capital, will cost 1 million euro. It is noted that the net value of Geniki in late March last year was 100 million euro. Today, Geniki is not receiving interbank funding from Société Générale, and such obligation is not foreseen in the future.

With Geniki, Piraeus Bank acquires a fully recapitalized and self-financing bank. This acquisition, combined with the planned investment of 444 million euro, will strengthen the strategic position of Piraeus and will make it more attractive within the consolidation of the banking system. Piraeus will increase its capital adequacy ratio by 1.2 percentage points and it will raise its liquidity by more than 300 million. Also, there will be more opportunities to meet the necessary amount to be covered by the private sector in the impending increase of the share capital within the bank's recapitalization. The financial institution will reinforce its leadership in the Greek banking market, holding 20% of the deposits and 17% of the funding. Moreover, it will maintain a 124% index of loans to deposits and will improve the index of predictive delayed repayment of loans from 60% to 56%. The index of accumulated loan projections will also increase from 7.4% to 9.5%.

With this acquisition, the total assets of Piraeus Group will reach 77 billion euro and it is estimated that customer deposits will reach 37 billion euro.

Piraeus Bank Group, which includes Geniki Bank and Agricultural Bank ATEbank, will ensure jobs for 18,000 employees and will have a total network of 1,328 branches, with presence in 10 countries, serving six million customers. Lazard Frères is the financial advisor of Piraeus Bank on this transaction.

Tags: Piraeus Bank Geniki Bank recapitalization
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