Interregional Bank for Settlements of the Telecommunications & Postal Services, or Sviaz-Bank, has transferred problem and other relevant assets to its parent State Development Corp. VEB.RF and is ready for its handover to Russia's Federal Agency for State Property Management and subsequent merger with PAO Promsvyazbank, Kommersant reported Sept. 18.
Sviaz-Bank said in its IFRS report for the first half of 2019 that it sold five mutual funds and a number of other assets to VEB.
VEB provided Sviaz-Bank with a cash contribution of 12.8 billion Russian rubles. The total amount of assets transferred to VEB amounted to nearly 27 billion rubles, the newspaper reported.
VEB took control of Sviaz-Bank and another local lender, Globex Bank, following the 2008 financial crisis and merged the banks in 2018. The Russian government decided in 2019 that the merged lender will be transferred to state-owned Promsvyazbank, which specializes in servicing Russian defense-sector companies.
Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev expects Sviaz-Bank could be transferred to Promsvyazbank by the end of fall, while Promsvyazbank head Petr Fradkov recently noted the transfer will be finalized by the end of 2019.
The upcoming merger with Sviaz-Bank will help Promsvyazbank increase its client base and expand its regional presence without putting pressure on its capital ratios, Kommersant noted.
Meanwhile, news agency TASS said Sept. 17 that Promsvyaz Capital, controlled by Promsvyazbank's former co-owner Dmitry Ananiev, appealed a legal settlement between the bank and nonstate pension funds NPF Budushchee and NPF Safmar. The settlement referred to 16.5 billion rubles worth of transactions carried out shortly before Promsvyazbank was bailed out by the Russian central bank in December 2017, the newswire reported. A hearing on the appeal is set to take place Nov. 14.
As of Sept. 18, US$1 was equivalent to 64.15 Russian rubles.
