Ak Bars Bank may recapitalize in three years
KAZAN. May 30 (Interfax) - Ak Bars Bank may place a supplementary issue of shares over the course of the next three years, said Ak Bars board chairman Valery Sorokin, who is the CEO of the bank's leading shareholder, Svyazinvestneftekhim.
Ak Bars has moved to three-year budget planning. "According to the three-year forecast, this [charter capital increase] is not a goal for 2014. I would not rule out 2015, perhaps 2016. But it must be seen how the situation develops," he told journalists after the bank's annual general meeting of shareholders on Friday.
Sorokin said the bank had "a rough estimate" of the recapitalization volume, but did not disclose it.
The bank has drawn up three development scenarios: aggressive, passive and balanced. "Naturally, we selected the golden mean. The strategy we will adhere to could be entitled 'moderate growth.' Since last year our maneuver has been to transition from relatively aggressive, rapid growth to smoother growth. We do not have the goal of ensuring high growth," Sorokin said.
The main performance indicators are higher so far this year, Sorokin said without providing specifics. "The quality of growth is important, not simply earnings as some sort of bookkeeping maneuver, but earnings as a genuine flow of money," Sorokin said.
Earlier on Friday, the head of the National Bank of Tatarstan, Yevgeny Bogachev, said Ak Bars Bank had reserves for boosting profits and its margins should amount to 10%-20%. When asked about that issue, Sorokin said: "Probably not this year. That is not a goal for this year and perhaps not for next year. But in principle this is a goal that must be striven for."
As for the decision by shareholders to waive dividends for 2013, Sorokin said this was "the deliberate choice" of Tatarstan's government. The overwhelming majority of enterprises in which Svyazinvestneftekhim owns stakes are paying dividends. "For the bank, a special decision was made, in connection with the specifics of the banking business," he said, adding that waiving dividend was a form of support for the bank.
In turn, the bank's sponsorship of a number of projects in Tatarstan can be viewed as "quasi-dividends," he said.
Ak Bars Bank was the 17th biggest Russian bank by assets as of the end of the first quarter of 2014 according to the Interfax-100 ranking compiled by the Center for Economic Analysis.