After weeks of blockades and political maneuvering, the Ukrainian subsidiary of Russian state-owned Sberbank was sold on March 28 to a consortium of investors headed by the son of a Russian oligarch.
The move came a day after the Azov-affiliated National Corps began to dismantle a blockade outside the bank’s Kyiv headquarters, which had been bricked over for around a month as part of a protest against state-owned Russian banks in the country.
The bank was sold to a consortium of investors that include Latvia’s Norvik Banka as well as an unnamed Belarusian company, according to a Sberbank press release.
According to a Norvik Banka press release, the consortium’s majority shareholder is Said Gutseriyev, son of Russian coal and oil magnate Mikhail Gutseriyev, whose wealth Forbes tabulated at $6.2 billion in March 2016.
The sale needs to be approved by Ukraine’s anti-monopoly commission and the central bank before it goes through. Sberbank said in a press release that it expect approval by the middle of 2017.
In a Norvik Banka press release, bank chairman Oliver Bramwell paid special attention to Gutseriyev’s ties with Britain, saying that he “went to the Harrow School and Oxford University.”
Gutseriyev called the purchase a “long-sighted and profitable investment” in a statement. Norvik Banka added that it would take measures to reduce its presence in Russia in order to “liquidate political risks,” though it did not specify what those measures would be.
The consortium is taking over Sberbank-Ukraine’s credit portfolio, which consists of Hr 60.5 billion ($2.23 billion) in loans, according to a spokeswoman. That makes the bank the fourth largest lender in Ukraine, according to National Bank of Ukraine statistics.
Norvik Banka’s loan portfolio as of June 2016 was 236.4 million euros ($256 million), according to its latest audited financial statements.
The National Corps, which blockaded Sberbank’s Ukraine headquarters on Volodymyrska Street in central Kyiv, said that it had achieved the “first strategic stage” of blocking Russian capital from Ukraine.
“Under pressure from street protests, it is now officially forbidden for Russian banks in Ukraine to conduct any external financial operations in support of individuals connected with them that would take out capital to the Russian Federation,” the Azov-affiliated political party wrote in a press release.
The National Corps had blockaded Sberbank branches in cities around Ukraine. It lifted the blockade yesterday, one day before the sale was publically announced.
President Petro Poroshenko sanctioned Russian banks on March 16, preventing them from shifting capital out of Ukraine. Poroshenko made the decision in response to vocal protests by nationalist groups like the National Corps.
The National Bank said in a statement that it had not yet received documents confirming the sale.
Norvik Banka did not immediately reply to a list of questions about the sale, and about other members of the consortium.
