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bne June 2017 The Month That Was I 9
Finance Central Europe
Raiffeisen Bank International, the sec- ond largest bank operating across CEE by assets, reported that net profit almost doubled y/y to €220mn in the first quarter as its Russian business started to bounce back.
Czech lender Komercni banka reported a 41% y/y rise in net profit attributable to shareholders to CZK4.1bn (€153mn) in the first quarter of the year, boosted by one-off items and a drop in provisioning.
Hungarian lender OTP Bank’s net profit rose to HUF52.8bn (€170mn) in the first quarter, beating expectations.
Southeast Europe
Slovenia’s nationalised Nova Ljubljan- ska Banka announced plans to pro- ceed with an IPO of at least 50% of its existing ordinary shares on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange by mid-June. NLB also plans to list global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange.
Turkey’s Mavi Giyim, owner of the popular blue jeans brand Mavi, plans to list on the Istanbul stock exchange, in what could be the largest float on the bourse in years. An initial 50% stake will be floated, with the option of selling an additional 15% in an IPO that could value the company at about $800mn.
Eastern Europe
The EBRD’s board of governors “overwhelmingly” voted to reject a bid by Russia to restart the develop- ment bank’s lending there. Since the freeze in 2014, Russia has already twice requested that the EBRD resume lend- ing, but only to the board of directors that actually run the bank.
Eurobond holders of Ukraine’s biggest state lender PrivatBank filed a lawsuit
in the London Court of International Arbitration challenging the bail-in for their securities during the bank’s nationalisation.
Fitch Ratings affirmed Ukraine’s long-term foreign- and local-currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at ‘B-’ with a stable outlook.
Belarus received a new $300mn tranche from a $2bn stand-by loan with the Russia-led Eurasian Fund for Stabilisation and Development (EFSD) that was agreed in 2016, the finance ministry in Minsk said.
The former CEO of Russia’s Vnesh- prombank Larisa Markus was sentenced to nine years in jail by
a Moscow court for extracting about RUB113.5bn (€1.83bn), in what has become the biggest case of banking fraud in the country.
Eurasia
IBA, Azerbaijan’s largest bank, announced it would halt foreign currency-denominated loan repayments in order to restructure its forex obligations and swap them for sovereign debt.
Russia wrote off $240mn of Kyrgyz- stan’s debt, turning it into develop- ment assistance. Moscow pledged to increase support to the country in line with its accession into the Eurasian Eco- nomic Union (EEU).
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