"The whole people are becoming a shareholder": the government bought Sberbank from the Central Bank

The sale of the Central Bank 50% of Sberbank shares to the government has been completed. It was possible to help out for the package noticeably less than expected in a “calm” time.

Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS

What happened

The Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank issued a joint application for the completion of the transaction.

• The contract of sale of 50% of the shares of Sberbank from the funds of the National Welfare Fund (FNB) was concluded on April 8.
• The transaction price is defined as the average price of ordinary shares of Sberbank based on the results of trading on the Mosbirzh for 30 days from March 9 to April 7 - 189.44 rubles per share. This gives the price of the total package of 2.139 trillion rubles.
• 50% of the ordinary shares of Sberbank were transferred to the government today, another action will be transferred until May 6. The preservation of the action is necessary for the conclusion of a three -year joint -stock agreement between the Central Bank and the Government.

“In fact, in the person of the Federal Tax Service, the shareholder of PJSC Sberbank and the main beneficiary of its activities are becoming the whole people of Russia,” said Sberbank President German Gref.

Read also the Central Bank came up with a way to sell Sberbank without an offer to minoritytaria

What you need to know about the deal

The meaning of the purchase of shares of the State Bank by the government is to additionally spend part of the FNB funds bypassing the budget rule: part of the funds will return to the budget in the form of the profit of the Central Bank, which it is obliged to transfer by law. It was assumed that the money would go to finance social expenses from the Epistle of President Putin, and partially to restructure the OPC loans. Only in 2020, the Central Bank should send 500 billion rubles from the transaction to the budget.

From the statement of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance it follows that the price of the transaction was redesigned: it was assumed that due to the “coronavirus” fall in the quotations, it will be calculated as average for six complete calendar months preceding the first tranche as part of the transaction. The transaction will pass without an offer to minority.

The amount of the transaction is less than the initially specified 2.5 billion rubles, and the price of the shares is 6% lower than the current quotations. However, in March they fell noticeably lower, and since the announcement of the transaction in early February, the Sberbank campaign fell by 20%.

What's next

The market almost did not respond to the deal: it is regulated by a separate law and simply outside the market plane, Kommersant notes . In the conditions of the budget deficit, the transfer of funds will be held with a large delay, experts of the publication believe, and therefore the issue of assessing the package is also not fundamental.

According to the law, the Central Bank will receive 300 billion rubles from the transaction and an additional 200 billion rubles as compensation for losses following the sale of sanitized banks.