SARAJEVO (Bosnia and Herzegovina), February 28 (SeeNews) – Italy's UniCredit Group will merge on March 4 two of its three banks operating in Bosnia, UniCredit Zagrebacka Banka and HVB Central Profit Banka, to form Bosnia’s leading bank, the two Bosnian banks said on Thursday.
The banks are UniCredit’s subsidiaries in one of the two autonomous parts that form war-divided Bosnia – the Muslim-Croat Federation. The Italian group controls a third bank in Bosnia's other half, the Serb Republic, which is called Nova Banjalucka Banka.
“With great satisfaction we inform you that UniCredit Zagrebacka Banka and HVB Central Profit Banka will become a single, leading bank in Bosnia and Herzegovina on March 4, 2008,” the two banks said in a statement posted on their websites.
The Federation’s banking agency said earlier this week it would withdraw the licence of HVB Central Profit Banka as of February 29, as the bank would merge with UnCredit Zagrebacka Banka and all its rights and liabilities would be transferred to Zagrebacka.
The two banks’ shareholders endorsed last month the merger of the two lending institutions to form a bank with more than 820,000 clients and a combined market share of 25%.
UniCredit Zagrebacka Banka said last week it raised its 2007 net profit by 19% to 29.75 million marka ($22.97 million/15.21 million euro) on total revenue of 182.7 million marka. The bank’s assets totalled 2.163 billion marka at the end of 2007, up from 1.854 billion marka a year earlier.
UniCredit Zagrebacka Banka is headquartered in Mostar, in the southern part of the Muslim-Croat Federation. The bank has 61 offices on the territory of the Federation and employs 840.
HVB Central Profit Banka is headquartered in the capital Sarajevo. As of June last year, it had 40 offices on the territory of the Federation and 150,000 clients. No profit figures for last year were available. HVB Central Profit Banka tripled its 2006 net profit to 15.5 million marka, while its assets grew to reach 1.279 billion marka at end-2006.
Bosnia's largest bank by assets at end-2007 was the local unit of Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank, whose assets totalled 3.819 billion marka.
Bosnia has around 30 commercial banks that serve a market of some 3.8 million people.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)
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