December 30, 2011, 02:00 / Finance

Crisis phenomena are diluted with money

The question of the stability of individual banks and the entire system has become one of the most pressing against the backdrop of a possible worsening of the crisis situation Tatyana Voronova

The biggest story of the year was the acquisition of the Bank of Moscow by state-owned VTB. The latter was able to arrange the buyout of the city's share in such a way that it avoided holding a competition and an offer to the remaining shareholders. As a result of a series of positional battles, combined with court decisions, he gained management control over the bank, and later shareholder control. But this was only the beginning of a larger-scale action. In the Bank of Moscow portfolio, the new owner counted questionable loans worth 366 billion rubles. It was decided to save the Bank of Moscow using a loan from the Deposit Insurance Agency for 295 billion rubles. at 0.51% per annum. The Bank of Moscow placed this money in OFZ, reflecting a profit of 150 billion rubles.

In response to the question of how one of the country’s largest banks could have a hole worth 150 billion rubles, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said that this was a consequence of the control of the capital’s administration. And the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, Alexei Ulyukaev, even spoke about a “special” Moscow “zone of the Luzhkov period”, where laws were not always in effect. Former president and co-owner of the Bank of Moscow Andrei Borodin and ex-mayor of the capital Yuri Luzhkov deny all accusations.

After the situation with the Bank of Moscow became public, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, responsible for supervision, Gennady Melikyan, resigned, after which the director of the supervisory department, Alexey Simanovsky, was promoted to deputy chairman. And the deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank, Bella Zlatkis, admitted that the story with the Bank of Moscow provoked additional questions for Sberbank, the share in which the Central Bank intends to reduce under the government privatization program. Of all the privatization transactions this year, only one placement took place - only VTB was able to take advantage of the market situation.

Sberbank made almost more specialized purchases than in the previous few years. Transactions on the Swiss SLB Commercial Bank and the Russian insurer Alliance Life have been closed, and legally binding agreements have been signed on the Eastern European Volksbank Int. (the amount could be 585 million euros) and Troika Dialogue (more than $1 billion).

Sberbank's Russian competitors primarily hoard cash. The deterioration of the liquidity situation led to the fact that the Central Bank had to recall the anti-crisis instruments of 2008. And although it did not switch to unsecured lending, the daily injection of liquidity reached 1 trillion rubles. in a day.

The growth of corporate lending has also slowed down. The reduction in rates gave way to their growth, which helped banks compete for the sympathy of depositors - the growth rate of individual deposits is not yet much inferior to last year. The most generous bankers are again on the radar of the Central Bank, and the regulator itself promises to pay more attention to the quality of banking assets and the adequacy of reserves.