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Weekly Lists
June 21, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
bne:Banker
Moody’s cuts 18 Turkish banks in wake of surprise sovereign downgrade
Slovenia to sell Abanka to Nova KBM, OTP misses out
Moody's Investors Service on June 18 downgraded 18 of Turkey’s banks, cutting their local currency long-term deposit ratings, and their local and foreign currency senior unsecured and issuer rat- ings (where applicable) by one notch and maintaining the outlooks as negative.
The standalone baseline credit assessments (BCAs) of 16 banks were downgraded by one notch, while the BCAs of the remaining two banks – government-owned Ziraat Bankasi and Turkiye Vakiflar Bankasi (Vakifbank) – were downgraded by two notches.
This rating action followed Moody's surprise downgrade, on June 14, of Turkey's sovereign bond rating to B1 from Ba3, with a nega- tive outlook, which also resulted in the lowering of the ceiling for foreign currency deposits to B3 from B2.
Slovenia’s third largest bank, Abanka will be sold to local peer Nova KBM owned by US fund Apollo, the Slovenian Sovereign Holding (SDH), in charge of privatisation, said on June 19.
SDH was due to announce the decision on the privatisation of Abanka on June 17 but it postponed it to have more time to examine the offers filed by the two bidders: OTP bank, which recently bought Slovenian SKB, and Apollo.
"SDH agreed that the contract for the sale and purchase of Abanka shares to be concluded with Nova KBM as a best bidder," SDH said. The contract will be signed on June 20, when more details on the sale will be revealed.
Swedish lender Swedbank suspended the CEO and the CFO of its Estonian branch on June 17 in effect of the ongoing internal investigation that focuses on the branch’s handling of billions in non-resident transactions, the bank said in a statement.
The decision comes in the wake of a series of allegations, which surfaced in the Swedish media early this year, about the Estonian branch of Swedbank handling billions of euros’ worth of suspicious transactions, including from non-resident clients based in Russia. The shady transactions flowed between 2010 and 2015.
Swedbank has also been linked to the scandal involving the Estonian branch of Danske Bank, which also was alleged to not have controlled billions of euros in non-resident transactions between 2007 and 2015.
Swedbank suspends top executives in trouble-beset Estonian branch