January 29, 2010, 15:35 / Finance

Sberbank minority shareholders are interested in VIP clients

Minority shareholders of Sberbank requested information about its interaction with the largest borrowers, heeding the calls of one of the well-known lobbyists for the interests of minority shareholders of the largest Russian companies, Alexei Navalny, to study the feasibility of the bank’s participation in the “rescue operations” of the aluminum giant Rusal.

“We want to get information not in the context of each individual borrower, but a general picture of the risks,” Danilov-Danilyan, head of the Sberbank minority shareholders committee, told Reuters.

Navalny, in his blog, called on the supervisory boards of two state banks - Sberbank and VTB, which lent to Rusal and acted as co-organizers of its IPO, to make the discussion of possible transactions to acquire shares of the aluminum holding and refinance its debt public.

“We are confident that the supervisory boards of Sberbank and VTB will be able to objectively weigh the arguments for and against participation in the “rescue operations” of UC Rusal and its owners and will act in the interests of their shareholders, regardless of political pressure and the influence of corrupt official groups,” writes Navalny in his blog as a minority shareholder of Sberbank and VTB.

Navalny's proposals were transformed into a letter to the board of Sberbank with a request to provide materials on loans and asset management, including those collected on the balance sheet of Sberbank Capital. “We requested information on loans to the largest borrowers and the security of loans, including Rusal mentioned,” Navalny told Reuters.

“We do not want to highlight Rusal as a separate topic... we requested information about large borrowers and the bank’s risks in this regard, including in the field of asset management... As an example, we cite Rusal and a number of other companies ", Danilov-Danilyan said, adding that his committee is not discussing specific companies. “Navalny could not convince us of the ‘uniqueness and exoticism’ of this company [Rusal],” he added.