According to unofficial information from the Serbian daily newspaper Danas, the other bidders are the Serbian bank AIK Banka (EUR 430 million) and Austria's Raiffeisen Bank (EUR 390 million).

Komercijalna Banka is the largest state-owned bank in Serbia and second largest on the market, and the government expects EUR 500 million in proceeds from its sale, the paper added.

According to Danas, the bid from NLB is, considering that the state is not selling the entire bank, higher than expected. If the entire bank were sold, it would fetch around EUR 550 million or 80% of the bank's book value.

The Serbian government owns 48.6% of Komercijalna Banka, and the plan is to buy a combined 34.56% stake from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The sale would then enter the next stage in November, when binding bids will be collected after due diligence at the bank. The entire procedure is expected to be concluded in 2020.

The target date suits NLB as the bank will see the ban on takeovers, imposed by the European Commission in exchange for a delay in NLB's privatisation, expire at the end of the year.

Blaž Brodnjak, the chairman of the recently privatised NLB, has recently said that the Serbian market will probably be one of the first targets, as the NLB group's market share there is the lowest among all foreign markets, reaching 2%.

After struggling with losses after the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis, Komercijalna Banka cleaned its balance sheets to start operating with net profit in 2017.

Its net profit reached EUR 71 million last year, and EUR 36.8 million in the first half of 2019, up almost 20% year on year, the Serbian portal Blic has recently reported.