MTS Bank studying insurance assets for M&A, made significant progress in search - CEO

MOSCOW. Nov 19 (Interfax) - MTS Bank is interested in insurance assets and is studying deals that will complement its business model, the bank's CEO Ilya Filatov said on Investor's Day on Tuesday.

"We've said that we were always interested in insurance. We've probably made quite a lot of progress now. There are certain names that we shouldn't say for now. We're not yet certain about banks - whether there are any assets we're ready to invest in at this time," he said.

The bank is looking for an M&A partner that will complement its business. "We have, in principle, learned quite well how to sell and monetize the capital provided to us by shareholders and the market. Therefore, we certainly see targets that, for example, have no retail presence at all but have a decent corporate segment and excess capital. Essentially, these are precisely our targets. We will definitely consider a complementary deal that helps us with either capital values or aspects such as auto lending," he said.

The bank held an IPO in April, during which it attracted 11.5 billion rubles in capital. The bank's management said that it may use these funds to place shares on the exchange in order to purchase assets, and can see several interesting options.