The European Commission is set to clear a group of Austrian investors to acquire Hungary's two bourses and its clearing house, a source familiar with the situation said on Monday.The Commission will give HVB Bank Hungary, a unit of Bank Austria , Wiener Boerse, the operator of the Vienna Stock Exchange, and several others a green light for their purchase of the Budapest Stock Exchange, the Budapest Commodities Exchange and the clearing house and depository Keler, the source told Reuters.
The Commission has a Tuesday deadline for approving the sale, which was announced in May last year.
HVB Bank Hungary declined to comment while Budapest bourse President Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy said it had not received any notification from the Commission.
However, he had previously said that if the deal received an EU approval, the Budapest stock exchange would press ahead with its planned merger with the commodities exchange and its plans to gain a majority stake in Keler.
Keler is held 46.7 percent by the two bourses and 53.3 percent by the National Bank of Hungary, which has repeatedly said it plans to sell this stake, and clearing and settlement are not part of its core activities.
The merged Budapest bourse would seek closer business cooperation with the Austrian exchange and may join forces in creating a bourse alliance in the region, Szalay-Berzeviczy had said. The two stock exchanges could even place a joint bid for the Warsaw exchange when it comes up for sale, he had said.
The group of Austrian investors gained a majority stake in the Budapest bourse last May through a takeover orchestrated by HVB Hungary.
That transaction gave HVB Hungary a 25.2 percent stake, followed by Wiener Boerse, which got 14 percent.
Austria's Erste Bank also holds a combined 12.2 percent, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank has 11 percent, and Raiffeisen Zentralbank owns 6.4 percent.
Source: Reuters
22.03.2005