deal

Yesterday, Andrei Klishas, General Director and Chairman of the Board of the Interros holding company, said that settlements for the holding's purchase of the UWC Group banks have been completed. Interros intends to merge its new acquisition with Rosbank within two years.
Interros announced the purchase of the OVK group of banks (as well as STB-Card and Inkahran), previously owned by Alexander Smolensky, for $200 million back in July (see Kommersant on July 29). And as Andrey Klishas reported, after an audit of the banks of the UWC group, “the situation there turned out to be better than we imagined.”
Yesterday Interros completed all payments for the purchase of the banks of the UWC group and now, according to Andrei Klishas, intends to merge them with Rosbank. “We think it’s possible to do this,” he told Kommersant. “This will happen within two years. Since there are several UWC banks, the merger process will take time.” However, for now these are only plans - the new owner of the UWC banks has not yet submitted documents for the merger to MAP. “We will do this if necessary,” explained Andrei Klishas.
According to Kommersant, as of July 1, 2003, Rosbank ranked eighth in terms of equity capital (8.41 billion rubles) and seventh place in terms of net assets (77.1 billion rubles). The total equity capital of the banks of the UWC group is 2.68 billion rubles (40th place), and the total value of their net assets is 16.44 billion rubles (34th place).
As Vladislav Pershin, chairman of the board of the First OVK bank, told Kommersant yesterday, the group's banks and Rosbank "are already coordinating their actions at the board level." At the same time, according to him, further coordination of the actions of “six UWC banks and banks belonging to the Interros group will be handled by the management company Fincom Investments and Management LLC.” The chairman of its board is the former deputy chairman of Rosbank Georgy Zabolotsky. He, as well as Deputy Chairman of Rosbank Igor Antonov, will also join the new boards of directors of all UWC banks, whose re-election is scheduled for the near future.
At the same time, according to Andrei Klishas, the current chairman of the board of directors of UWC banks, Alexander Grigoriev, will retain his post. “However, the final decision must be made by the new boards of directors of UWC banks,” Andrey Klishas clarified. It is expected that this week there will be changes in the composition of the board of Rosbank. As Andrey Klishas told Kommersant, “it will most likely include managers of the UWC group of banks who are responsible for its most developed business areas,” that is, retail specialists.
KIRILL J-YACHEISTOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 198 dated 10.29.2003, p. 14

Interros will merge Rosbank with UWC