The Hungarian OTP bank, which was included by the Ukrainians in the list of international sponsors of the war due to continuing operations in Russia, recorded large profits in the first half of the year both in Russia and Ukraine, the Nepszava daily wrote on Friday.
According to the newspaper, the bank’s profit in Russia in the first half of the year amounted to 51 billion ft (approx. PLN 590 million), and in Ukraine 359 billion ft (approx. PLN 359 million). – The Ukrainian economy has adapted to the conditions of war, and after last year’s shock it is returning to normal. We are optimistic about our Ukrainian bank – said OTP representative Laszlo Bencsik, quoted by “Nepszava”.
The bank wants to leave Russia, but nobody wants to buy the business there
The considerable profits of the OTP bank in Ukraine were not hindered by its inclusion on the list of international sponsors of the war by the Ukrainian National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAZK). – There are no specific legal consequences of inclusion on this list, but it did not improve the image of the bank. OTP has contacted the institution that compiled the list, but we don’t know what the outcome will be, Bencsik said.
OTP bankAdriana Iacob/Shutterstock
According to “Nepszavy”, the bank would like to leave the Russian market, but at the moment there is no one who would like to buy a Russian company. “In Russia, OTP has scaled down its operations, withdrawing from corporate loans and focusing almost exclusively on retail consumer loans. In the first six months of the year, borrowing costs were very low, which is why the Russian bank was able to generate such high profits,” the daily wrote.
The largest Hungarian bank draws most of its profits from abroad
In the first half of the year, the OTP bank achieved record profits thanks to the foreign influence of subsidiaries and bank takeovers, the Nepszava daily reported on Friday. “While seven years ago, two-thirds of OTP’s profits came from Hungariancurrently only 31 percent. profits are generated in the country, and 69 percent. comes from abroad,” noted the newspaper. At the end of June, Hungary once again did not support the payment of a tranche from the European Peace Facility to Kiev in the amount of about 500 million euros, citing the blacklisting of the Hungarian OTP bank by the Ukrainians as the reason. to remove the Hungarian OTP bank from the list of international sponsors of the war, Olena Konoplia, the representative of NAZK, informed in early July, quoted by the Hungarian HVG portal.The OTP Group is the largest commercial bank in Hungary and one of the leaders in the financial services market in Central and Eastern Europe. It serves over a dozen million customers in 11 countries.
Main photo source: Adriana Iacob/Shutterstock