The Austrians at Raiffeisen are out of the race for the privatisation of CEC (Savings Bank). They bid less than the Greeks at NBG and the Hungarians at OTP, who will be battling in the finals to take over the fifth-largest Romanian bank.

"After analysing the bids and assigning a score according to the agreed scale, only two banks are left in the competition. The finalists are, in alphabetical order, the National Bank of Greece and OTP Bank," Sebastian Vladescu, Finance Minister and head of CEC's privatisation committee announced yesterday.

Although he declined comment on the value of the two bids, Vladescu said, "since we're going ahead with the privatisation process, the bids must be within acceptable limits." Vladescu seemed pleased with the financial bids submitted by the two final banks. The Finance Minister explained Raiffeisen did not qualify because the score its bid got was at least 10% lower than the last (qualifying) bid. Mediafax news agency quoted sources close to the privatising process that say only one of the two bids that made it into the finals exceeded 500 million euros. A 500 million-euro bid evaluates the bank at 715 million euros.

The state is selling 69.9% in CEC as part of the bank's privatisation process, a stake that includes the 9.9% of the Property Fund, for which this fund will get the cash equivalent once the money from the privatisation is collected. In a move that is unrelated to the competition involving only NBG and OTP now, the state will sell 5% in CEC to the bank's employees and to all those retired employees whose last place of employment was with this lender.

"OTP Bank submitted a fair and realistic bid for the acquisition of the 69.9% in CEC," stated Laszlo Wolf, deputy chief executive of OTP, the largest Hungarian bank. Wolf says the Hungarian bank's management welcomes the announcement about making