Translated material
Window from Europe
The Swedes bought a bank in St. Petersburg
Western financial groups continue to expand into the banking market of Russia and Ukraine. Last Wednesday it became known that the second largest Swedish bank, SEB AG, intends to acquire the small St. Petersburg Petroenergobank. Although the details of the transaction have not yet been disclosed, SEB representatives do not hide the fact that they are buying “an entrance ticket to the Russian market.A statement from the Swedish bank posted on its official website said: “For SEB, this transaction is a more effective way to enter the Russian banking market compared to setting up a bank from scratch. The purchase will allow us to provide services to our clients in Russia,” Mats Kjar, executive vice president and head of SEB’s banking division responsible for work in Eastern Europe, is quoted as saying. And bank representative Vivek Hirdman-Rührberg said: “There are a lot of representatives of Swedish business in Russia, and our activities will be aimed at them.” By the way, SEB previously opened its representative office in Moscow, but this seemed insufficient, and the bank followed the path of its competitors. As you know, last spring Hansabank, part of the Swedbank banking group, acquired 100% of the small bank Quest for $3.4 million.
The small Petroenergobank (capital - 249.2 billion rubles, assets - 1.7 billion rubles) was founded 11 years ago. It was created as a bank focused on servicing the regional electric power industry and related industries. Until 2002, its main shareholder (89.1% of shares) was Lenenergo. However, after an additional issue, his share was reduced to 21.6%, but despite this, the power engineers retained control over the bank: the chairman of its board of directors is Andrey Likhachev, the general director of territorial generating company No. 1, created on the basis of Lenenergo power plants. , Kolenergo and Karelenergo.
SEB has not yet spoken about the details of the transaction, as well as specific plans for Petroenergobank, citing the fact that the purchase has not yet been agreed upon with the Russian Central Bank.
This deal was not the first for the Swedish group in the post-Soviet space. SEB already has its own subsidiaries in the Baltic states; in addition, at the end of 2004, the Swedes acquired the Ukrainian bank Anzhio for $27.5 million. However, this is not the end of the group’s expansion into the Ukrainian banking market - SEB recently announced its desire to buy another local lender.
As you know, the demand for Ukrainian banks from Western investors is very high. Last year, the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen acquired Aval Bank for $1.06 billion. The size of the transaction was unprecedented for the CIS banking sector. However, this record has already been broken by another Ukrainian bank: recently the Italian Banka Intesa announced its intention to buy Ukrsotsbank for $1.16 billion. Ukrsotsbank is the fourth largest bank in Ukraine, owned by a famous businessman and son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Pinchuk. That is, three of the five largest Ukrainian banks are already controlled by foreign financial groups. In addition, many Western players also say that they are considering the possibility of acquiring Ukrainian banks.
Since the beginning of this year, the share of foreign capital in the banking system of Ukraine has increased from 19.5 to 23%. And market participants have no doubt that it will soon increase to at least a third. The Western share in Russian banks is much more modest - only 12%. Unlike Ukraine, in Russia foreigners are currently acquiring banks from the second or third top ten, at best. And larger credit institutions put up for sale have not yet found their buyers: as you know, the same Banka Intesa conducted negotiations with Rosbank, which did not end in anything.