Two bids received for Hypo Bank's property in the Balkans

Two potential buyers have submitted a bid for the acquisition of Balkan-based property of the national Austrian bank Hypo Alpe-Adria. The deadline to submit a binding bid for the takeover of the Bank's operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia expired Friday, Indikator.ba cited the daily Dnevni List as reporting.

This sale, ordered by the European Commission and managed by Germany's Deutsche Bank, is to be finished by mid-2015.

Alexander Picker, the executive director of the Hypo group and the former director of Hypo Bank Bosnia-Herzegovina, assessed it was unlikely that any of the bids submitted would exceed the book value of EUR 500 million.

Aside from these two bids, the Hypo group also received offers to sell certain other parts of the network, which the officials of Hypo Alpe-Adria and the Austrian government consider a good sign as it increases the competition.

One of the bids came from controversial Ivan Zilic, who is claimed by the media to be the richest Croat from Vares living in Luxembourg with a wealth of EUR 24 billion, but also a charlatan. He told the media that he had offered to pay EUR 2.7 billion for Hypo's property, but he also requested from the Austrian government to pay him a EUR 3 billion insurance.

This was also confirmed by the Austrian Finance Ministry which stressed that Zilic was invited to Vienna to present his offer. However, Zilic declined to come to the capital of Austria.