Czech bank Moneta to acquire Home Credit for €767m
Czech Republic-based bank Moneta has signed a memorandum of understanding to buy consumer finance provider Home Credit’s (HC) Czech and Slovak operations – and its retail challenger Air Bank for €767 million.
HC sees itself as the “world’s biggest fintech” and its goal is to lend to people with little or no credit history.
Air Bank
A major shareholder is PPF, a privately held financial and investment group owned by billionaire Petr Kellner.
HC is active in ten countries, including Russia, Kazakhstan, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines and the US. It has €21.8 billion in total assets, a net loan portfolio of €16.4 billion and a net profit in H1 of €40 million.
With HC’s Czech and Slovak businesses, Moneta says it wants to combine with HC and Air Bank to create a “strong challenger bank able to leverage a large customer base and with the capabilities to achieve market success against incumbent competitors”.
HC will take a 24.48% shareholding in the expanded Moneta, thus becoming its biggest shareholder.
According to Moneta, it has a customer base of one million. It will get Air Bank’s 637,000 clients and HC’s 469,000 retail borrowers. The combined entity will have 237 branches – including Air Bank’s 35 branches.
The transaction is expected to be completed by 1 July 2019.
FinTech Futures was recently on an exclusive tour of HC’s operations in Prague, to learn about Air Bank, P2P lender Zonky and Home Credit Venture Capital (HCVC).
