Montenegro’s Agency for the Protection of Competition has provided positive opinion on the request for merging Crnogorska komercijalna banka a.d., CKB, and Societe Generale banka Montenegro a.d., SGM, and forwarded it to the Central Bank of Montenegro, CBCG, reported Pobjeda daily. CBCG is going to make the final decision on the request for merging based on collected data, while the opinion of the afore-mentioned Agency is also one of the conditions even though it’s not mandatory.
Vice-governor Miodrag Radonić has been dealing with the merger issue as governor Radoje Žugić excluded himself from the decision in order to prevent a conflict of interest (his daughter, Jovana, has been working in CKB since July 2018).
On 28 February, OTP Bank Plc. announced that the Montenegrin subsidiary of OTP Bank, CKB, had signed an acquisition agreement on purchasing 90.56% shareholding of SGM for EUR 40.5 million. According to the law, it’s not possible to merge these two banks without prior approval of CBCG.
In the event that the request is approved, CKB will purchase SGM via Montenegro Stock Exchange.
