National Bank of Greece Agrees to Buy Kreditprombank

According to news reports, the National Bank of Greece (NBG) has signed a binding offer for the acquisition of majority stake in Ukraine’s #13 lender, Kreditprombank, for USD 500 mln. The NBG released a statement on its official website January 19 that it submitted a binding offer for the acquisition of a Ukrainian bank without specifying the name. Alexander Viktorov: If we use Kreditprombank’s 11M06 reported book value of USD 117.5 mln, the deal price would translate into a P/B multiple of 4.3, which corresponds to the current valuations of Ukrainian banks of similar size at 4.5x P/B 2006. This is the first acquisition of 2007, which we believe will be another year of dynamic M&A activity in Ukraine’s banking sector with medium and small-sized banks getting most of the attention. Last year, the sector saw eleven acquisitions for an amount of USD 2.5 bln.