Western investment banks willing to raise capital for Ukraine's recovery - Davos forum participants

MOSCOW. Jan 19 (Interfax) - Cooperation between private and public sectors and the engagement of substantial private funding would be instrumental in Ukraine's speedy and successful recovery, Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon and BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink said.

"We are very interested and standing ready" to provide both ideas and intellectual capital, as well as real return capital and leadership, in rebuilding the country, Ukrainian media quoted Solomon as saying at the Ukrainian Breakfast conference in Davos.

Fink said, "In my conversation with the president [Zelensky], I said it is our objective, if you hire us, we're not going to be creating new oligarchs, we're creating a new Ukraine, it's our objective then to create a capitalistic system where capital can be put to use. It's not about we're building the old Ukraine, it's about building a better Ukraine."

Solomon acknowledged that Ukraine's recovery would not be an easy process and would require a substantial amount of funding. "This can't happen without the public sector and public money partnering with private money, there's no question that, as you rebuild, there will be good economic incentives for real return and real investment," he said.

"There is going to be a need for an enormous amount of bridge capital, there's going to be a transition period where we can't easily raise the capital, and private sector and financial institutions with big resources and governments are going to have to lend and bridge," he said.

Solomon particularly welcomed the Canadian government's idea to issue C$500 million in sovereign bonds in support of Ukraine. "If you scale that more broadly around the world [...] you can multiply dollars. We've seen success over time in leveraging philanthropic capital," he said.

Fink from BlackRock also insisted that he was not talking about pure philanthropy, but "if we can rebuild Ukraine, it can be a beacon to the rest of the world."

"And the president [Zelensky] not only accepted it, but he said, 'No, you need to even do more. Ukraine must become a country that innovates, that is a leader in new technologies, a leader in decarbonization'," he said.

Businesses should build "a true foundation where we can identify the needs of the country, we could create the proper KPIs, and an organizational structure, we will create the ability to create the monitoring [of] where the money goes and how it's utilized," he said.

"The ability to build this platform, to hire Ukrainians to manage this and run this is not going to be something we're going to be doing, we're just setting up the organizational structure, the process, and then we will help recruit the Ukrainians who can actually navigate it, manage it, and then bring it to fruition," Fink said

This could help attract capital by showing it the result, he said.