Best bank
OTP Best debt house
BNP Paribas
Best equities house
Citigroup
Best M&A house
JPMorgan
Best local partner
Concorde Securities
When a bank dominates its domestic market to the extent that OTP does, one might expect a trend towards complacency and stagnation.
However, OTP enjoyed another record year in 2003, apparently because it is no longer content merely to be a domestic champion but now has ambitions to become a serious regional player. Its international acquisition strategy, after the feat of beating Erste Bank in the bidding for Bulgarian bank DSK, continued in the past 12 months with the acquisition of RoBank in Romania for $48 million. The bank is also bidding for Jubanka in Serbia.
The bank continues to be highly profitable. In the first quarter of 2004, it achieved net income of Ft35.1 billion ($169 million), an increase of 85%. ?This is not only unprecedented in the history of OTP but also in the Hungarian banking sector,? says CEO Zoltan Speder. Regionally, too, the bank seems to be a record-breaker ? its return on equity of 43.9% in the first quarter of 2004 is the highest Euromoney has come across in central and eastern Europe, as it was in last year?s awards.
The bank managed to achieve such strong income growth partly on the basis of its rapidly growing mortgage business, partly from a 117% growth in securities trading, and partly by managing to raise the average interest margin on its loans by 134 basis points on last year?s levels. The bank says it expects consumer loans to be the hottest growth market in 2004.
In the debt markets, BNP Paribas has had an impressive year in Hungary. It did the most loan deals, together with Sumitomo Mitsui, including an e600 million loan for MOL and a e400 million deal for OTP. And with Citigroup it also managed to win the mandate for Hungary?s e1 billion 10-year deal. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein deserves applause for its arrangement of Hungary?s first international MBS programme, for FHB.
Citigroup wins our best equity house award for its accelerated equity offering for 10.5% of oil company MOL, which sold in February 2004 for $346 million. AEOs, which are faster and require less due diligence than typical IPOs, are a popular method of raising finance for CEE companies. LUKoil did a $775 million AEO at the end of 2002, and TPSA, OTE and Cesky Telecom have all followed suit.
Concorde Securities, managed by head of Budapest Stock Exchange Gyorgy Jaksity, wins best local partner. Concorde successfully arranged the privatization of FHB on the market for $48 million, as well as the privatization of Postabank, one of Hungary?s largest retail banks, which was bought by Erste Bank in December 2003.
