A consortium including nonstate pension fund Blagosostoyanie and JSC VTB Bank could become a new shareholder in Vozrozhdenie Bank, Kommersant reported, citing unnamed sources.
Bank Vozrozhdenie's main shareholders, Dmitry and Aleksey Ananiev, must sell their controlling stake in the bank following the December 2017 bailout of PAO Promsvyazbank, which they also controlled. VTB CEO Andrey Kostin said in January that the state-owned bank would analyze the possibility of purchasing Vozrozhdenie.
On Feb. 5, Vozrozhdenie published a list of candidates for its board of directors, including Blagosostoyanie director Yury Novozhilov and two other representatives of the fund, but later said the list was published by mistake, Kommersant and Vedomosti reported. The Ananiev brothers were not on the list.
Market sources told Vedomosti that Blagosostoyanie does not plan to participate in the acquisition of Vozrozhdenie, but could enter into an agreement with its future owner about merging the lender with Absolut Bank (PAO), which is affiliated with Blagosostoyanie. A potential merger between the two banks was considered in 2015, before Vozrozhdenie was acquired by Promsvyazbank's owners.
