Sberbank looking at possibility of transferring blocked assets to separate legal entity

MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - Sberbank is studying the possibility of transferring blocked assets to a separate legal entity and is discussing this option with authorities, Taras Skvortsov, senior vice president and director of the finance department, said.

"We are now considering this possibility and are discussing it with the regulator," Skvortsov said during a conference call on Friday.

"We, of course, have blocked assets. As part of this law, there is another opportunity to resolve them in this way spelled out in the law, and we are exploring exactly this possibility," he said.

Federal law No. 292-FZ came into force in the summer of 2022, allowing sanctioned banks to reorganize, to form a new legal entity and to transfer to it both assets frozen due to restrictions, as well as liabilities from obligations to foreign creditors. After this, all debt payments to non-resident clients would be performed using only the assets of the new company. This right is valid through December 31, 2024.

Skvortsov said that the process is currently in the preliminary stage. "We are working closely with the regulator," he said.

Transferring blocked assets from the bank's balance sheet to a separate legal entity is one of the options for working with them, Skvortsov said.

"We have many assets that are now being settled one way or another, and, in general, work is ongoing. This law is just one of the possible tools, we have many of them, and this work has not stopped even for a day," he said.

"The blocked assets are in varying degrees of accessibility to us. We have talked about the fact that we actually created a 100% reserve almost immediately for the most problematic blocked assets that we had frozen when they happened," Skvortsov said.