The Slovak subsidiary of the Hungarian OTP Bank is up for sale, with CSOB, Tatra banka and investment group Penta, which controls Prima Banka, the hottest candidates to purchase it, the Trend weekly reported on Tuesday. None of the four actors have denied the information or called it untrue, but they did not want to comment in more detail. The Hungarian company began developing OTP Banka in Slovakia from the Investment and Development Bank, which it took over in 2002. Trend notes that the Slovak OTP has been put up for sale once before, before the summer of 2008, but its owners put a stop to the process after a couple of months in reaction to the emerging crisis, which would have pushed the value of the financial institution down.
Anca Dragu, Photo: TASR
