| Mikhail Fridman assessed his Alfa Bank Over the 15 years of its existence, Alfa Bank “has grown to $3.5 billion.” - this is the amount estimated by its founder and co-owner Mikhail Fridman. However, the shareholders do not yet intend to sell their brainchild, and there are no people willing to buy it now. Banking analysts agree with Mr. Friedman's position: it will not be possible to sell Alfa Bank for that kind of money. At least for now.
“Today there are no negotiations on the topic of sale and plans for an IPO,” Mr. Friedman said at a press conference yesterday. However, he did not deny himself the pleasure of determining how much his bank could be worth in the event of a possible sale. In valuing Alpha, Mr. Friedman used the multipliers used by bank buyers in neighboring Ukraine, not in Russia. “With a coefficient of 4 and a bank’s capital of $900 million, it could be worth more than $3.5 billion,” Mr. Friedman calculated.
Market participants considered this assessment to be very optimistic. “This is too high a price for the Russian market,” says Dmitry Lepetikov, executive director of the Development Center. -- “Impexbank was sold to the Austrian Raiffeisen International Bank-Holding AG with a coefficient of 2.8. And it was a great success for the seller. In addition, as transactions involving the acquisition of Russian banks show, buyers bear very large indirect costs associated with partial reorientation of the business, retraining of personnel, changes in the management system, etc.”
The reluctance to conduct an IPO is explained by at least two reasons. “We have the internal resources to invest in expanding the business,” Mr. Friedman explained. As you know, during the summer banking crisis of 2004, the owners of Alfa placed $800 million on bank deposits to maintain its liquidity. Moreover, “the bank's return on capital is currently over 20%, and there is no point in sharing it with the public market,” Mr. Friedman said. According to Mr. Lepetikov, last year the average market return on capital of the banking sector was about 22-25%. “At Alpha this figure is at market level or even slightly lower. That is, the bank did a good job last year, but we can’t talk about outstanding results yet,” he said.
According to Alfa Bank Chairman of the Board Rushan Khvesyuk, the volume of investment this year will amount to $125 million. These funds will be used to develop the retail business. As you know, the widely publicized Alfa-Bank Express project, aimed at retail clients, was not very successful for the bank and was discontinued last year. However, retail is still a priority for Alfa. Over the next two years, the bank intends to occupy at least 10% of the consumer lending market. Now he has more than modest indicators in this market segment - only 2%. Natalia ROMANOVA |
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