An interesting government decree was published in the Hungarian newspaper on Wednesday, which published it Privátbankár.hu In the public interest, the government categorizes the direct and sole acquisition of Budapest Bank, MKB and Takarékbank as a merger of national strategic importance. The regulation is rather brief, the substantive part is a single paragraph, and as a justification it only includes:

In order to increase the competitiveness of the Hungarian financial sector.

National strategic consolidation means that such a deal is effectively out of sight of the Bureau of Economic Competition – the office cannot investigate or prevent the merger.

as such We wrote about it earlier: The controlling owners of Budapest Bank Group, MKB Bank Plc confirmed. And Takarék Group their previous letter of intent on October 30th Signing an investment and union agreementAnd they decided to contribute their bank share in the joint holding company, thus creating the second largest banking group in Hungary. At the same time, Magyar Bankholding’s top management commenced its operations. The duties of the company’s chairman were executed by Dr. Zsolt Barna and József Vida are the CEOs, Adam Baluj, Klani Lilvay, and Attila Tajti are also members of the board of directors.

The owners of Takarékbank will receive the largest stake in the giant bank, 37.69 percent, MKB owners will receive 31.96 percent, while owners of Budapest Bank (BB) will receive 30.35 percent. About how much headache aforementioned bank can cause in professional circles only as an anti-OTP, We wrote here.