Austria's Hypo Alpe Adria launches SEE unit sale

Nationalized Austrian lender Hypo Alpe Adria will aim to secure bids for its southeastern Europe banking network by early December, pushing on with a process aimed at nursing the group back to financial health, Reuters reports.

Hypo had picked Deutsche Bank in May to run the deal it hoped would raise at least 1.5 billion euros ($1.92 billion). Bids for all or parts of the network are due by Dec. 7.

Hypo, which had to be nationalized in 2009 to stave off collapse, wants to divest banking units in Austria and Italy as well but sees the banking network in former Yugoslavia as the pearl among its assets.

The group of banks and leasing operations in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro has nearly 11 billion euros in assets, more than 1.1 million customers and around 250 branches, Hypo said. It has a 7 percent market share based on assets.

An Austria-based holding company steers the division.

Hypo Alpe Adria Chief Executive Gottwald Kranebitter had said in May that banks in Europe, Russia, Turkey and southeast Asia could be interested, as well as financial investors.

He put the book value and equity of the SEE bank network assets at around 1.5 billion euros, the level it aims to achieve with a sale.

The SEE business generated around 20 million euros of the group's 70 million euro profit in 2011.