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Ukrsibbank. In January-June, AXA Insurance collected more than UAH915.6mn of gross insurance premiums, which is 14% more than in the same period of 2017. The total amount of insurance payments for this period amounted to UAH455mn, which is 17% more than in 2017, according to Interfax news agency. Present in 62 countries, AXA's 160,000 employees and distributors are committed to serving our 105 million clients. Our areas of expertise are applied to a range of products and services that are adapted to the needs of each and every client across three major business lines: property-casualty insurance, life & savings, and asset management, according to the company's marketing materials.
Russia's major state-owned lender Sberbank will seek a new buyer for its Ukrainian subsidiary after the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has refused permission for the second time to the small Minsk-headquartered state-owned lender Paritetbank that wants to buy it. "I think that we will have to look for a new buyer, because the NBU very clearly said that the buyer from Belarus is undesirable for them," Interfax quoted Sberbank first deputy head Lev Khasis as saying on the side-lines of the Finopolis 2018 Forum in Sochi on October 18. "They [the Ukrainian regulator] refused because they consider the Belarusian buyer insufficiently 'reputable' to approve the deal," he said, adding that the Ukrainian unit "is continuing to operate in Ukraine and continues to comply with all regulations". According to bne IntelliNews ' correspondent in Minsk, Paritetbank has changed its owners between the two bids, and is now owned by the nation's State Property Fund instead of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s administrative affairs department. In March, the NBU attributed its rejection of the first bid by Paritetbank to "the incompatibility of the applicant with the requirements of the legislation of Ukraine," the NBU said in a statement on March 27, without elaborating. In late 2017, Paritetbank said that it "highly assesses the potential of [Ukraine's] Sberbank in the context of the goals and tasks facing the management for the development of the banking business". However, some Minsk-based market experts attribute the controversial move to the possibility that Lukashenko is acting in the interests of German Gref, the head of Russia's Sberbank. Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev, the authoritarian president's confidant and one of the richest businessmen in Russia, could be a mediator in the deal, they say. Earlier, Lukashenko invalidated his July special decree in which he approved the acquisition of Paritetbank for $50mn by businessman Viktor Prokopenya, who has dual Belarusian-Cypriot citizenship. Prokopenya is a business partner of Said Gutseriev, the 29-year-old son of Mikhail Gutseriev. Previously, Prokopenya submitted documents to the NBU requesting approval for his indirect acquisition of 100% of shares in the Ukrainian operations of Russia's Sberbank via Paritetbank. However, the businessman withdrew his documents again. "We have made the decision to withdraw from the NBU our bid to purchase Ukraine's Sberbank in order to focus on other planned investments and the projects we are working on," a representative of Prokopenya's VP Capital said in a statement on August 3, 2017. In July, the NBU refused to approve the acquisition of the local operations of Sberbank by Gutseriev, and another businessman, Grigoriy Guselnikov, who controls Norvik Bank in Latvia.
Sergiy Tigipko, owner of Kyiv-based TAScombank, plans to acquire another bank . "We've bought and will buy a lot of things -- VS Bank is already on our balance sheet,” he told the Ukrainian Banking Forum, referring to the Ukraine unit of Russia’s Sberbank. “We are now ready to purchase another bank and to integrate it into TAScombank if necessary." As reports FinClub, Tigipko earlier acquired Universal Bank from Greek owners and bought the
51 UKRAINE Country Report November 2018 www.intellinews.com