Page 9 - bne magazine March 2017 issue

bne March 2017 The Month That Was I 9
Finance
Central Europe
Private equity fund CVC Capital agreed to buy Polish convenience store chain Zabka Polska from fel- low PE firm Mid Europa Partners. The value of the deal was not revealed, but reports suggests the price was around PLN5bn (€1.2bn).
The Czech coalition leading Social Democrats said the party plans to make the imposition of a special tax on the banking sector a central plank of its campaign ahead of parliamentary elec- tions in October.
Southeast Europe
Spain’s second biggest lender BBVA agreed to acquire an additional 9.95% of Turkish lender Garanti Bankasi from Dogus Group for TRY3.32bn (€859mn), raising its stake to 49.85%.
Turkey’s newly established sovereign wealth fund, set up to finance infra- structure projects, is attracting seri- ous international investor interest, its head Mehmet Bostan said.
Romania’s Constitutional Court rejected a law under which Swiss franc loan debtors would have been given the right to convert their loans at the exchange rate prevailing on the date that the loan contract was signed.
This was the second law on bank loans drafted with a visibly populist agenda, after the parliament had endorsed the debt discharge bill, which protects debt- ors from further claims by banks after their collateral is given to the bank.
18 people have been charged in con- nection with the collapse of Bulgaria’s Corporate Commercial Bank. Those charged include Corpbank’s major-
ity shareholder Tsvetan Vassilev, two partners from the lender’s auditor KPMG and former central bank deputy gover- nor Tsvetan Gunev.
Eastern Europe
Deutsche Bank reached a settlement with the US authorities over billions of dollars in suspicious deals by its clients in Russia, with the bank now required to pay a $425mn penalty. US and UK authorities have since 2016 been investigating allegations that the bank helped Russian clients to disguise trades from 2011 through 2014, includ- ing those referred to as “mirror trades”, totalling as much as $10bn in suspect transactions.
Ukraine’s finance ministry announced a tender to select a financial adviser for a possible $500mn Eurobond placement in 2017. Kyiv will be able to re-access international capital markets by late 2017 with 5-year bonds at a yield of 9%, the IMF said in a report published in October 2016.
The bonds of Russia's troubled bank Peresvet, controlled by the Orthodox Church, sank after the publication of conditions of the bail-in scheme pro- posed by the central bank. Previously, the bank defaulted on eight bond issues, but the conditions of the bail-in recently pro- posed to the main creditors of the bank are substantially more attractive than those proposed to the bondholders. The Moscow Patriarchy controls 36.5% of the bank.
The privatisation of Russia's second- largest lender VTB Bank will be postponed at least until the lifting of Western sanctions against the country. It was recently reported that the privati- sation of Russian Railways will also
be pushed back at least until 2020.
Eurasia
International Bank of Azerbaijan, the largest lender in the country, is to transfer up to AZN6bn (€3bn) worth of bad assets to a state-owned credit organisation, Aqrarkredit, in the first quarter of 2017 in exchange for dollar- denominated loans. The Azerbaijani government took over management of the bank completely in March 2015, and has invested some AZN10bn since in cleaning up IBA's non-performing loans.
South Korea's Kookmin Bank plans to sell its 41.93% stake in Kazakhstan's Bank CenterCredit, the country’s fifth largest bank, to a consortium of Kazakh investors, including Tsesnabank. The transaction will be accompanied by
the sale of the International Financial Corporation’s (IFC) 10% stake, which will be sold to the bank’s founder and chairman Bakhytbek Baiseitov.
Iran has filed an International Court of Justice lawsuit against the US’ freez- ing of $2bn worth of Central Bank of Iran assets, which Washington says it intends to hand over to victims of terror- ist attacks over the past 30 years. Tehran said the seizure is in contravention of the Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights signed by pre-revo- lution Iran and the US in 1955.
Uzbekistan's central bank is to intro- duce a 10,000-sum (around $3) banknote to ease everyday cash pay- ments. Given the sum’s drastic depre- ciation amid the economic slowdown, Uzbeks are forced to carry stacks of bills around with them to complete transac- tions with existing denominations.
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