Hungary's MOL says OTP cuts stake below 5 pct

BUDAPEST, July 4 (Reuters) - Hungarian oil and gas group MOL MOLB.BU said on Friday that OTP OTPB.BU, Hungary's biggest bank, has reduced its stake in the company below five percent.

Earlier this week MOL said it would recall 8.757 million of its own shares from OTP and 4.513 million from development bank MFB prior to paying dividends on its 2007 earnings.

MOL has a total of 109.67 million shares listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange.

MOL has said it would pay a total dividend of 85 billion forints ($570.5 million), or 883.36 forints per share, after last year's results on July 16.

The move to recall the shares has enabled MOL to hand out more cash to shareholders as it does not pay a dividend on treasury shares.

At 1339 GMT, MOL stock traded flat at 20,200 forint on the Budapest bourse when the wider market .BUX was down 0.8 percent. (Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Quentin Bryar)