Bulgaria central bank approves sale of TBI Bank
Bulgaria’s central bank has approved the indirect sale of TBI Bank, one of Bulgaria’s smaller financial institutions, to Luxembourg-registered 4finance Holding SA. The acquiring party will buy 100 per cent in TBI Financial Services BV, which is the sole owner of TBI Bank, the central bank said.
The approval was granted after 4finance Holding presented a strategic development plan, which envisions keeping the lender’s current business model and “adapting it to new technological market trends,” the Bulgarian National Bank said in a statement.
The central bank gave no further details about the buyer, but reports in Bulgarian media said it was a unit of consumer lending firm 4finance, owned by Russian billionaire Oleg Boyko and headquartered in Latvia, which already operates in Bulgaria under the Vivus brand.
TBI Bank is one of Bulgaria’s smallest lenders, with 523 million leva (about 267.4 million euro). TBI Financial Services bought the Bulgarian arm of Slovenia’s NLB Banka in 2011, but it also operates consumer lending and leasing subsidiaries in Bulgaria; it is also present on the Romanian market with as well as banking, consumer lending and leasing services and also owns a leasing company in Ukraine.
Dutch-registered Kardan NV said in March it agreed the sale of TBI Financial Services for 69 million euro.
(Photo: M van den Dobbelsteen/sxc.hu)
