With Ukrainian experience

Co-owner of FinPoint company entered into the capital of Ijladabank with former directors of Orgresbank

Ukrainian specialist in bank purchase and sale transactions Sergei Budkin is preparing to expand his business to Russia. Mr. Budkin is a co-owner and managing partner of FinPoint LLC Investment. In Ukraine, in less than three years, he organized transactions to purchase 16 banks, most of which were sold to foreign investors. With the assistance of FinPoint, for example, Aval Bank was sold to the Raiffeisen group, Privat-Invest to the Czech PPF group, and Index Bank to the French Credit Agricole. Now Mr. Budkin is registering the Russian company FinPoint. Like the Ukrainian one, it will engage in the purchase and sale of businesses.

Mr. Budkin started the business of buying and selling companies in the 90s, first at Delloite he was engaged in consulting on mergers and acquisitions and privatization transactions, then he headed the investment department of Bank Austria. After the merger of Bank Austria with the Creditanstalt bank, Mr. Budkin left the bank and created the FinPoint company together with a Ukrainian partner, whom he did not disclose.

In Russia, the name of Mr. Budkin became known after the purchase of 85.7% of Orgresbank by the Scandinavian banking group Nordea (former shareholder of the International Moscow Bank). The Ukrainian FinPoint acted as a consultant on the transaction. After its completion, Mr. Budkin said that he was going to start a business selling assets in Russia. “The Russian company FinPoint is in the process of creation. We will have another partner from Russia. He had experience in the banking sector, but now he cannot be called a banker. Further, the number of partners will depend on the scale of the business,” Mr. Budkin told a Vremya Novostei correspondent yesterday.

Mr. Budkin himself is now also partly a banker - he recently acquired a small stake in the capital of the Udmurt Izhladabank. Mr. Budkin decided to diversify his business in company with the ex-directors of Orgresbank. In early May, three former members of the board of directors of Orgresbank - Igor Naumov, Sergei Tikhomirov and Viktor Yarutov - acquired a total of 27.1% in Izhladabank. “They could buy these shares by selling theirs in Orgresbank,” says a source in banking circles, although there is no official data on their participation in Orgresbank’s capital. Orgresbank itself did not disclose the structure of its shareholders before purchasing it from Nordea. Chairman of the bank's board Igor Kogan does not comment on the actions of the bank's former directors.

Another partner of the former directors of Orgresbank was Philip Gens, the son of Georgy Gens, the creator and president of the Lanit group of companies (works in the field of technological services and IT services). Philip Gens acquired 11% of the shares of Izhladabank, and Sergei Budkin himself acquired 1%. The banking business is booming, he explains the reason for the purchase: “I looked at it and liked it. This is an investment with the aim of diversifying the portfolio, including the country one.” Izhladabank has been operating since 1992, has 22 credit and cash offices in Izhevsk and nearby cities, as well as three representative offices. At the end of the first half of 2006, the bank ranked 304th in terms of assets (RUB 2.3 billion) in the Interfax-CEA ranking. Until May 2007, the bank's president, Vladislav Kolpakov, owned 98.2% of the bank's shares, but now his participation has been reduced to 47.9%. The bank is actively developing its retail business - lending to individuals and accepting deposits in Izhevsk and nearby cities. Within three to four months, the new shareholders will decide on the bank’s business development strategy. Mr. Budkin does not yet want to talk about the possibility of buying shares of other banks: “This is a question of having free money for investment, and I am a superstitious person.”

Elena KHUTORNYKH