VTB Allowed to Transfer Depositors to Guta Bank
www.kommersant.com - March 28, 2005
Past Friday, Vneshtorgbank’s (VTB) Supervisory Board sealed a concept, whereby the VTB would create a specialized retail bank based on the Guta Bank’s assets. VTB intends to split off its retail and investment businesses during five years, though depositors will be transferred to the new subsidiary bank within two years.
It took less than an hour for the VTB’s Board to determine Guta Bank’s fate. According to a source with the Finance Ministry, the resolution says “to approve the concept of establishing a retail bank based on the Guta-Bank and to commission the Vneshtorgbank’s Board to carry out a package of measures for its implementation.” Kommersant learnt that the government’s representatives (state-run stake in the VTB reaches 99.9 percent) were told by Mikhail Fradkov to vote for this concept.
Under the concept, the VTB's depositors will be transferred to Guta Bank and serviced there. In return, Guta Bank will transfer to its parent bank the middle/large corporate clients. The depositors’ transfer from the VTB is expected to complete within two years. The whole project will take five years, a source with the VTB’s Supervisory Board told Kommersant. The VTB head Andrey Kostin said the VTB and its retail bank will exist “as a bank group with consolidated balance.” But the procedures of concept’s implementation and its financial component “have not been elaborated.”
One more key issue has not been raised at the Friday’s meeting of the Supervisory Board – privatization of Guta Bank and VTB itself. This matter has been casually mentioned, as it is not burning for today’s stage of the bank’s reform, the source said. However, Kommersant learnt the documents made out for the meeting specify that the VTB may attract new holders, including the foreign ones, in its retail business. The matter in hand is the EBRD’s involvement, as the latter has been long keeping an eye on the VTB.
In view of the above it appears that the VTB’s privatization has been rejected. “Now, no sale of either small or large stakes in the VTB to any separate organizations, including the foreign ones, is planned. Application of the IPO procedures seems more advisable,” Kostin said a week ago before President Vladimir Putin. As to Guta-Bank, the VTB may attract foreign investors, but it will retain control over Guta. Anyway, the stake of at least 50 percent will be maintained, Kostin specified.
The VTB denied any comments Friday, specifying that all information will be promulgated Monday.