By Andrei Skvarsky.
Russia’s Sovcombank and Rosevrobank have agreed to merge in a deal that will bring into being what is expected to be one of Russia’s top three private banks by assets and capital.
The merged lender will have assets of more than 1 trillion roubles (more than $17bn) and capital of more than 100bn roubles ($1.7bn), Sovcombank said in a statement.
The two firms, both of which are universal banks conducting retail, corporate and investment business, will continue to operate independently and “without any significant organisational changes” until the end of 2018, the statement quoted Sovcombank chief executive Dmitry Gusev as saying.
Sovcombank is the 16th and Rosevrobank 43rd largest bank in Russia by assets, according to Russian banking information portal Banki.ru (there are 506 banks in the country altogether).
Sovcombank is going to acquire a stake of a minimum of 35 per cent in Rosevrobank under the merger agreement in addition to its current 45 per cent interest in the lender.
“Rosevrobank’s team is to become the core of our united corporate business,” Gusev said as quoted in the statement.
“After the merger, Rosevrobank’s clients will have access to a wider geography due to the presence of Sovcombank in more than 1,000 cities throughout Russia, whereas clients of Sovcombank’s corporate unit will get a broader product line and high-quality services, which are considered to be a strong point of Rosevrobank,” he said.
Rosevrobank chief executive Ilya Brodsky, who has described the planned merger as “a natural result of a partnership with Sovcombank that began three years ago when Sovcombank became a shareholder of Rosevrobank”, will convert most of his Rosevrobank shares into a stake in the merged lender, the statement said.
Sovcombank has 2.5m customers and more than 2,100 branches across Russia. It has 8,900 employees. The bank is headquartered in Kostroma, a historic city 300 kilometres (190 miles) from Moscow, and has an office in Russia’s capital.
Rosevrobank has more than 400,000 private and more than 20,000 corporate clients. It is headquartered in Moscow and has branches in key Russian cities.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.