By Andrei Skvarsky.
Sberbank’s Turkish operation Denizbank is expected to become the biggest Turkish agent for global money transfer company MoneyGram under a recent agreement.
{{{?}}}
The deal plugged one of Turkey’s top lenders into the network of a remittance firm that runs successful business in 198 countries but last year admitted to fraud charges in the United States.
Sberbank deputy CEO Sergey Gorkov has described the deal is the basis for “strategic collaboration”, according to a statement from Russia’s biggest lender.
Denizbank is ranked fifth biggest among Turkish private banks and ninth biggest among all of Turkey’s 49 banks by consolidated total assets. It was bought by Sberbank in September 2012 for $3.6bn from Dexia, a Belgian bank that acquired the Turkish firm in 2006 for $2.44bn but ran into in financial troubles afterwards.
MoneyGram, which is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, will have its charges of “aiding and abetting wire fraud” dropped by 2018 if it complies with a November 2012 agreement with the US Justice Department whose terms include setting up a $100m victim compensation fund.
Sberbank holds almost one-third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets. The state-controlled institution is the main source of loans for Russia’s economy and the biggest deposit taker in the country.
It has more than 110m personal and one million corporate clients in 20 countries, including Britain, the United States, and countries in the CIS and Central and Eastern Europe. Within Russia, it is the bank with the largest network of more than 18,000 branches.
The Central Bank, Sberbank’s founder, owns a stake of 50% plus one voting share in the lender. The rest belongs to various domestic and international investors.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.