Media reveals nearly $130 million will be paid for Ukrainian Sberbank
Ukrainian Sberbank PJSC is being bought for about $130 million, according to the Kommersant daily newspaper. According to its sources, the amount is comparable to the bank’s present capital, which, according to international reports for January-September 2016, totals $144 million.
The buyers are businessman Grigory Guselnikov through Norvik Banka and Sayid Gutseriyev, son of Mikhail Gutseriyev, the owner of the PJSC RussNeft oil company. Guselnikov and Gutseriyev will purchase 45% and 55% of the bank, respectively.
All of the money, according to sources, will be transferred to the buyer immediately after the contract of sale enters into force. According to Sberbank, the deal should be closed before the end of the first half of the year. The parties refused to comment on the details of the bargain.
According to the interlocutors, Sberbank has been conducting negotiations with these investors since the end of 2016. "Initially, a much higher transaction amount was discussed. But the sanctions imposed by the president of Ukraine against Russian banks in mid-March affected the situation significantly," one of the sources said.
Sources also say that the actions of Ukrainian activists, who blocked the offices of Sberbank, aggravated the situation even more than sanctions.
It is worth noting that the agreements alone are not enough for completion of the deal. The National Bank of Ukraine or NBU should approve it, too. However, the NBU communicated to the newspaper that they had received neither official notification nor any appropriate documents from potential buyers.
The newspaper writes there is still some risk that the NBU may not approve the deal but there are no formal grounds for a refusal as both buyers are not purchasing the bank through Russian structures. On Guselnikov’s part, the buyer is the Latvian Norvik Banka. Sayid Gutseriyev is buying through a Belarusian company.
Guselnikov said that after the transaction, the bank will operate under the brand of the Latvian Norvik Banka. He expressed hope that after the change of the ownership, Ukrainian sanctions will be lifted from the bank.
However, Kommersant writes that the buyers should expect the automatic lifting of sanctions. The NBU refused to provide comments on this issue, noting that it "needs further examination."