Page 66 - RusRPTApr19

likelihood of a planned RUB5bn capital injection into OEB by its largest shareholders and in particular Baring Vostok," Moody's said. The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) conducted an inspection in 2018 which revealed material underprovisioning against OEB's corporate loan portfolio, securities and non- core assets under local reporting standards, Moody's recalled in its March 15 report.
The journalistic investigation on channeling money out of Russia through the Troika Dialog offshore network contains obsolete, distorted and wrong data, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. "It contains numerous facts that were known long time ago. They were mentioned earlier. Some of them are not consistent with the reality. Some items are mentioned incorrectly, with distortions, and therefore this investigation does not contain any particularly new things," Peskov said. Earlier, several media outlets, including RBC, published data from the journalistic investigation project of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), according to which investment company Troika Dialog, run by Ruben Vardanyan, created a network of offshore companies through which money was channeled out of Russia, including the use criminal schemes.
The bad assets of Russia's Promsvyazbank (PSB) of bankers Dmitri and Alexei Ananyev's worth RUB340bn have been transferred to Trust Bank (aka Trast Bank), completing the formation of the "bad asset" fund, the head of Trust Alexandr Sokolov told RBC business daily. Trust Bank has been picked by the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) as the basis for the Bank of Non-Profile Assets (BNA), absorbing RUB2 trillion worth of assets from the major banking clean-up waged by the regulator. The clean-up culminated in 2017 and 2018 with removing some of the largest private banking players from the market. PSB was rescued in 2017 and was slated to receive over RUB240bn ($4bn) in capital injections. Now AvtovazBank, one of PSB's subsidiaries, will be transferred to Trust/BNA. Other bad assets pulled into the BNA include those of Financial Corporation Otkritie, Binbank (aka B&N Bank), Rost Bank, and Trust Bank itself. The Finance Ministry plans to turn the post-clean-up PSB into a state-controlled "defence bank" exclusively servicing the military and industrial complex and shielding the rest of the banking sector from possible Western sanctions. Since May 2018 PSB is not disclosing its financial reports as part of the new regime: the bank will operate in secret in order to stymie US attempt to sanction it or its clients.
ABH Financial, the holding company of Alfa Bank, released strong 2018 IFRS results on February 28 and the bank's management held a conference call. Earnings came in at $1.32bn for the full year (up 66%) amid notable growth in retail lending, which kept the net interest margin stable despite high competition in the corporate lending segment, the bank's traditional strong suit. In addition, the bank showed good fee income growth and cost control. ROAE rose to 19.6% for 2018 from 13.2% for 2017, VTB Capital said in a note. Operating income before provisions was $3.13bn, up 34.7%. The net income margin came in at 4.8%, stable y/y due to a growing contribution of higher- margin products in the loan book (the share of retail loans rose from 15.4% to 19.9% over the year). Fee income grew 15.6% and accounted for 31% of pre- provision operating income. Despite the increased retail lending, the bank managed to keep operating costs under control, and the cost-to-income ratio fell to 39.5% from 51.8%. Cost of risk rose from 0.04% to 0.88% over the year, though the figures are incomparable due to IFRS 9 coming into effect at the beginning of the year. “The growth was attributable to corporate loans (whose
66 RUSSIA Country Report April 2019 www.intellinews.com