Bulletin: National Bank of Greece 'CCC+/C' Ratings Unaffected By United Bulgarian Bank Sale To KBC Group

MILAN (S&P Global Ratings) Jan. 3, 2017--S&P Global Ratings said today that its issuer credit ratings and outlook on National Bank of Greece (NBG; CCC+/Stable/C) are not affected by the bank's decision to enter into a definitive agreement with KBC Group for the divestment of its 99.91% stake in its Bulgarian subsidiary United Bulgarian Bank AD (UBB). We believe the sale is part of the restructuring effort agreed with the European Commission with the aim to reduce complexity and allow the bank to focus on its core business rather than expanding its franchise. As a consequence, we understand NBG will have to dispose its residual international assets--now representing less than 10% of total group assets--by the end of 2018. The

...MILAN (S&P Global Ratings) Jan. 3, 2017--S&P Global Ratings said today that its issuer credit ratings and outlook on National Bank of Greece (NBG; ###+/Stable/C) are not affected by the bank's decision to enter into a definitive agreement with KBC Group for the divestment of its 99.91% stake in its Bulgarian subsidiary United Bulgarian Bank AD (UBB). We believe the sale is part of the restructuring effort agreed with the European Commission with the aim to reduce complexity and allow the bank to focus on its core business rather than expanding its franchise. As a consequence, we understand NBG will have to dispose its residual international assets--now representing less than 10% of total group assets--by the end of 2018. The disposal would improve NBG's regulatory common equity Tier 1 ratio by about 100 basis points, and we estimate it would also have a mildly positive effect on our risk-adjusted capital ratio--about 0.25%-0.30% compared to 5.3% at the end of 2015. This does not materially...

Bulletin