Rost Bank intends to take over BaikalInvestBank, Smolensky Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SKA-Bank), TverUniversalBank, Bank Kor and also Uralprivatbank. The reorganization is on the agenda of Rost Bank’s AGM that is scheduled for August 13, the lending institution said in a press release.
The AGM will decide how the bank will forward a notice to the Bank of Russia’s territorial division about the launch of the bank’s reorganization and will also review the option of raising the bank’s charter capital through the issue of additional common and preferred registered non-documentary shares.
The bank’s president and management board chairman Artem Khenkin told Banki.ru executive director Elena Ishcheeva in an interview in early June that Rost Bank plans to take under one roof all banks it owns within a couple of years.
Last June Bank Kazansky went through reorganization by taking over Bank Rost. After this Bank Kazansky was renamed Rost Bank. According to Khenkin, Rost Bank’s banking group comprises six lending institutions, namely Rost Bank (Moscow), BaikalInvestBank (Irkutsk), TverUniversalBank (Tver), SKA-Bank (Smolensk), Akkobank (Surgut) and Bank Kedr (Krasnoyarsk).
At the beginning of 2013 Nikolai Lantukh, the beneficial owner of Ekaterinburg-based Uralprivatbank, unexpectedly sold the bank, saying he lost interest in banking business. The bank’s new owner, Moscow-based entrepreneur Alexander Erkhov, pursued an aggressive policy to draw deposits and issue loans and in several months he announced the purchase of another bank in the Urals and a management shakeup. In the upshot, Uralprivatbank management board chairman Yury Denisov stepped down. The bank failed to agree upon a new candidature to the position of the bank’s management board chairman and the bank had no executive with the right of signature and, consequently, was unable to conduct many operations. The bank suspended operations “for technical reasons”, and deposit holders panicked, while the bank itself was on the verge of losing its license. Then Nikolai Lantukh decided to buy back the asset. In mid-July 2013 the Bank of Russia approved Oleg Antonov, a banker with extensive expertise, as Uralprivatbank’s management board chairman. It turns out that now Uralprivatbank could again change hands.
