11 May 2012 09:14

New owners of Rossiysky Kredit to develop all banking services, including retail

MOSCOW. May 11 (Interfax) - Rossiysky Kredit Bank, which specializes in work with securities and financing investment projects, will develop all areas of business, including retail banking, following its change of owners.

The bank's strategy will be approved by its new board of directors, one of Rossiysky Kredit's new owners, Anatoly Motylev told Interfax.

"All areas of banking, including retail, will definitely be developed," Motylev said.

The Unikor group, which manages the assets of former Metalloinvest co-owner Boris Ivanishvili, announced on Thursday that it had signed an agreement with private investors to sell Rossiysky Kredit. The deal, which is to be closed by September 1, is worth $352 million.

The buyers includes the president of IT company Lanit, Georgy Gens; Motylev, the former owner of Globex Bank; the former owner of insurer Spasskiye Vorota, Boris Khait; as well as Boris Pastukhov, Viktor Lukoyanov and Vladimir Faerovich.

The investors are buying Rossiysky Kredit with their own funds, Motylev said. "The investors have various assets and, consequently, sufficient resources to finance the purchase. The financing is being carried out with the investors' own funds," he said.

Motylev said the distribution of stakes in the bank among the new owners is commercial information. There are no other investors in the bank other than the ones named above, he said.

The new owners plan to install their representatives on the board of Rossiysky Kredit, Motylev said. There are no plans to replace the bank's management at the moment.

"We have a reserve of time, and we are happy with the current team of managers, so we don't have an acute need for managers," Motylev said.

Rossiysky Kredit was ranked 206th by assets (11.7 billion rubles) at the end of the first quarter of 2012 on the Interfax-100 ranking of Russia's banks. It ranked 63rd by equity (8.4 billion rubles).

The bank's capital adequacy ratio was 65.92% as of April 1, 2012, while the minimum requirement for Russian banks is currently 10%.

The bank's capital currently allows it to increase assets by five to six times, Motylev said. "Upon reaching threshold figures for capital adequacy, we don't rule out the possibility of increasing capital at the expense of existing investors or new ones," he added.

Rossiysky Kredit secured a license in 2011 to accept retail deposits. The bank held 627.4 million rubles in retail deposits as of April 1, and had a retail loan portfolio of 15.6 million rubles, according to the Interfax ranking.

The bank's corporate loan portfolio stood at 5.6 billion rubles as of April 1, and investments in stocks amounted to 4.0 billion rubles.

The bank's net assets have shrunk for two consecutive years, falling by 12.8% in 2011 after a drop of 13.2% in 2010. At the beginning of 2010, the bank ranked 138th by assets (15.1 billion rubles) and 50th by equity (8.3 billion rubles).

Motylev formerly owned Globex, which was taken over by Vnesheconombank (VEB) during the financial crisis, in October 2008.

Motylev is also associated with another lender, AMB Bank. He is not officially named as an owner of this bank, but he sits on its board of directors.

Motylev told Interfax that the businesses of the two banks, AMB and Rossiysky Kredit, are not related. "Rossiysky Kredit Bank is a joint project of a group of investors. It is in no way related in either profile or scale of business to AMB Bank," he said.

AMB Bank was ranked 136th by assets at the end of the first quarter of 2012 on the Interfax-100.

Rossiysky Kredit, founded in 1990, was reorganized into a joint-stock bank at the end of 1997. Prior to the 1998 financial crisis, it was one of Russia's largest private banks and had a thriving retail business. In addition to Ivanishvili, one of Rossiysky Kredit's shareholders at the time was Vitaly Malkin, who is now a senator representing Buryatia.

Along with Menatep, OneximBank, SBS Agro and Most Bank, Rossiysky Kredit crashed in the 1998 crisis, but it survived thanks to being taken over by the Agency for Restructuring Lending Institutions (ARKO) in 1999. Impexbank, which was sold to the Raiffeisenbank group in 2006, acted as a bridge bank for it.

Rossiysky Kredit completed restructuring in mid-2003 and emerged from under the management of ARKO. The bank's charter capital was increased to 1.84 billion rubles.

Rossiysky Kredit now specializes in work with securities and financing investment projects, particularly investment in commercial real estate and the Moscow hotel industry. For example, the bank is an investor in the reconstruction of the Minsk hotel in central Moscow, which recently opened as the InterContinental Moscow Tverskaya; this was a development project of Unikor.