Page 32 - bne IntelliNews Georgia country report November 2017

Weekly Lists
November 11, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 32
bne:Banker Russian bankers
Ananyev bros could sell Vozrozhdenie
Ukraine regulator greenlighhts purchase of Sberbank's subsiduary VS Bank
Russian bankers Alexei and Dmitri Ananyev could sell one of Russia's largest private banks, Vozrozhdenie, Kommersant daily said on November 10 citing unnamed banking sources.
At the end of October the anticipated merger of Vozrozhdenie with another major Russian private bank Promsvyazbank (PSB) controlled by Ananyevs was postponed, worrying investors
and prompting Moody's to put both banks on rating review
for downgrade.
Reportedly the Ananyevs want to sell Vozrozhdenie to help the stability of Promsvyazbank, and the regulators would not mind the sale.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has approved the purchase of the Lviv-headquartered middle-sized VS Bank, a subsidiary of Russia's state-owned giant Sberbank, by local banker Sergiy Tigipko, Interfax news agency on November 8.
The direct buyer of VS Bank is Cypriot Bailican Limited. The move followed September's statement made by the regulator's deputy governor Yekateryna Rozhkova that the NBU has "preliminarily approved" the purchase of the lender.
Tigipko, the former vice prime minister under former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, is the owner of TAScombank and Universal Bank. In 2002-2004, Tigipko headed the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). Later, he was appointed as deputy prime minister for social policy in a cabinet of then-prime minister Mykola Azarov, who was a close associate of Yanukovych.
Komercijalna Banka, the largest predominantly state-owned bank in Serbia, will be privatised very soon, business portal Ekapija re- ported on November 8 quoting the manager of the Financial Sector of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Aleksandra Vukosavljevic.
The Serbian state is currently the bank’s largest stakeholder
with a 41.7% stake, while the EBRD owns 24.4% of the bank. Other shareholders include the World Bank's IFC Capitalisation Fund with 10%, DEG with 4.6%, Swedfund International with 2.3%, and a range of smaller stakeholders owning the rest.
Serbia’s largest state-owned lender Komercijalna banka to be privatised