Greece’s NBG ups stake in Stopanska Banka

Greece's largest lender National Bank raised its 75% stake in Macedonia's Stopanska Banka on Tuesday, buying an additional 20% on the Skopje stock exchange, an NBG official said.
"The additional shares were bought today from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the IFC," said the official who did not want to be named.
NBG, which is also present in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Albania, Cyprus and Ukraine, became Stopanska's biggest shareholder in 2000. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is a unit of the World Bank.
Stopanska has a network of about 65 branches and total assets of just over 1 billion euros, the NBG official said.