30 Oct 2009 16:20

Bank of Georgia reduces assets by 9% in Jan-Sept

TBILISI. Oct 28 (Interfax) - Bank of Georgia, the leading commercial bank in the country, reduced its assets by 9.2% to 2.647 lari (1.6772 lari/$1 on October 28, 2009) in January-September 2009, the bank said in its financial results.

In the third quarter of 2009, the bank's assets went up by 1.9% and down 2.2% over the past year.

As of September 30, the bank's loan portfolio came to 1.622 billion lari, down 13.6% since the start of the year. Reserves for problematic loans came to 171.4 million lari, or 10.6% of the total portfolio.

Over the nine months, Bank of Georgia's charter capital shrank by 11.4% to 609.8 million lari.

In January-September of this year, the bank's net loss came to 9.8 million lari, doubling in comparison with the same period of 2008.

The current shareholders in the Bank of Georgia are Bank of New York (Nominees) Limited with a 88.82% stake, Firebird Avrora Fund - 4.37%, East Capital Financial Institutions - 4.37%, and Bryum Limited - 1.31%. Individual shareholders hold the remaining stakes.

Bank of Georgia was 103rd largest bank in the CIS and biggest Georgian bank by assets at the end of the first half of 2009 according to the Interfax-1000: Banks of the CIS, compiled by the Interfax Center for Economic Analysis (CEA).