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Southeast Europe
October 5, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
The new shareholders are operating through UK- based company HEIM Partners, which is owned by the EBRD and Invalda INVL, with 37.5% of shares each, and Horizon Capital, which holds the remaining 25%. Horizon is responsible for strategic direction and management of the MAIB stake on behalf of the consortium, an EBRD statement said.
MAIB is the largest commercial bank in Moldova, with assets at the end of 2017 of €1.078bn and equity of €180mn. It is also one of the oldest, hav- ing been established in Soviet times. The shares that went under the gavel on October 2 have
had a complicated history, Malige explains. They have changed hands several times in the last two decades, but were bought by the non-transparent shareholders in 2012.
“None of the new shareholders has a controlling share and we will work together with the like- minded shareholders, local Moldovan investors,” Malige told bne.
These shareholders were using the bank in vari- ous scams to launder money and although the stake was split up into various holdings, they were illegally coordinating their actions.
The determination to do something about the corrupt nature of the Moldovan banking sector
has been gathering momentum, especially after there were mass demonstrations following the $1bn bank theft in 2014.
The 41% stake in MAIB was confiscated by
the state, under the new banking regulations introduced last year that provide improved ownership transparency, from non-transparent shareholders spotted by the central bank as operating in a coordinated manner. The stake was controlled by controversial local investor Veaceslav Platon according to reports. Platon is currently in jail for frauds related to Moldova’s savings bank Banca de Economii (BEM).
The National Bank of Moldova (NBM) had already blocked the voting and other shareholder rights
of the bank in March 2016 after the shareholders had been found to be illegally coordinating their actions: the stake had been split up into small pieces so as not to raise the central bank’s red flags on collusion. An appeal to the Stockholm arbitration court by the shareholders failed in 2017, clearing the way for the stake to be sold by the government to new investors. In June this year the EBRD threw its hat into the ring and said it would buy the stake in a consortium with the two private equity firms.
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