The Greek government’s bailout fund for the country’s banks After receiving a higher offer from UniCredit, HFSF said on Monday that it had sold its 9% ownership in Alpha Bank (ACBr.AT) to the Italian financial institution for the sum of 293.5 million euros ($314 million).
The previous month, it was revealed that UniCredit (CRDI.MI) would become Alpha Bank’s largest investor by purchasing a 9% interest that Greece’s HFSF formerly held. The agreement also stipulated that it would pay 300 million euros to buy most of Alpha’s company in Romania.
The investment fund reported that UniCredit had purchased its Alpha shares for 1.39 euros apiece. This price represents a premium of 9.4% over the stock’s closing price on the final trading day before the first announcement.
On October 20, the Friday before UniCredit announced the agreement, Alpha’s shares closed at 1.27 euros apiece. The transaction also includes a commercial collaboration to market financial products to Alpha’s consumers.
UniCredit has been attempting to revive fee-yielding areas that it had reduced during its crisis years to strengthen its capital under Chief Executive Andrea Orcel, formerly the head of investment banking at the Swiss bank UBS (UBSG.S.).
Since the crisis, Greece’s economy has shown improvement; the nation has attracted considerable investment. As a result, S&P Global raised Greece’s credit rating to investment grade in October.
HFSF completed the sale of its 1.4% interest in Eurobank earlier this month, and it is anticipated to go on with the sale of around 20% of National Bank within the next few days.
During the preceding decade, it made investments totaling around fifty billion euros to recapitalize the country’s four largest lending institutions after acquiring ownership holdings in those institutions.
The fund relied on Lazard Frères as its disposal counsel, while Rothschild & Co. served in that capacity for divestiture strategy advice.
As HFSF’s external legal advice, the United Kingdom branch of the American law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and Kyriakides Georgopoulos represented the organization.
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