Telenor mulls acquisition of bank in Serbia?

Telenor, one of the three mobile telephony operators in Serbia, is considering the establishment of its own bank, and they were also thinking about buying one of the existing banks in our country for some time. People at Telenor did not want to either confirm or deny such intention in a talk with NIN magazine.

Well-informed sources claim that they were eyeing KBC Banka in Serbia, but that the acquisition was probably not going to happen. One of the possible reasons is the fact that it is more cost-effective for Telenor to establish its own bank, for which a EUR 10 principal capital would be enough.

Sinteza Invest Group has cited unofficial sources as saying that Telenor asked the National Bank of Serbia about the conditions under which it could get a license to establish its own bank. Officially, such request has not yet been submitted to the NBS.

So far NBS has not given its consent to any company to form its own bank, and the last greenfield license was issued to Bank of Moscow five years ago.