Ukrainian Sberbank will change its name after the sale

The Ukrainian Sberbank will change its name after the sale of the Latvian Norvik Banka and the company of Said Gutseriev to a consortium. Grigory Guselnikov, the owner of Norvik Banka, stated this in an interview with the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

“Most likely, it will bear the name of Norvik Banka, because it will be a subsidiary of the European Norvik Banka,” Guselnikov said.

According to him, the Russian Sberbank is "independently responsible for its brand" and therefore will "take away" it. He also acknowledged that buyers would be reluctant to keep the existing name due to "negative street moments".

“In order not to escalate the situation further, to calm down, this brand will be replaced and the bank will function as a European bank, which it will be,” said the owner of Norvik Banka.

Guselnikov also said that the purchase negotiations had been going on for several months and coincided with protests against Russian banks in Ukraine.

• Sberbank announced the sale of a subsidiary bank in Ukraine on the evening of March 27. The buyers were Latvian Norvik Banka and a private Belarusian company; From a press release from Norvik Banka, it became known that the second buyer is Said Gutseriev, the son of Russian billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev.
• In mid-March, Ukraine imposed sanctions against five banks with Russian capital, including subsidiaries of Sberbank. This was preceded by a series of attacks on branches of Russian banks; activists demanded that the authorities stop economic cooperation with Russia. The central office of Sberbank in Kyiv was walled up with concrete blocks, the Alfa-Bank branch on Khreshchatyk was pelted with stones, dozens of ATMs in different cities of Ukraine were flooded with polyurethane foam.