KOMMERSANT. Bank Rost has not yet received any approval from the Bank of Russia for its reorganization by taking over BaikalInvestBank, Smolensk Joint Stock Bank, TverUniversalBank and Uralprivatbank, although six weeks have passed after documents were submitted, business daily Kommersant writes. Usually it takes the Bank of Russia 30 days to resolve such issues. However, the regulator gave no refusal either. The process could linger, especially if the regulator has some questions, the newspaper’s interviewees specify.
For the record, this July the bank received as many as two orders from the regulator as to additional pile up provisions for Rub 160 mln and to limit the opening of deposit accounts for six months, i.e. deposit accounts should not rise compared to July 7 (Rub 43 bln). The bank, as the Bank of Russia thinks, expanded too fast on the back of household funds (retail deposits jumped 21% within six months). This September Bank Rost failed to get CBR approval to buy Alrosa-controlled MAK-Bank. It is unknown why the Bank of Russia gave no approval as it makes no comments on operating lending institutions.
However, Bank Rost did not conceal that CBR again gives the bank no opportunity to expand business through the takeover of four banks for reasons not related to the previous complains. “We submitted required reorganization documents to the Bank of Russia on August 15, but we had to specify some data. “They concern one of the banks (TverUniversalBank), the examination of the documents revealed some mistakes made during the bank’s initial registration, CBR asked to eliminate them," says Tatiana Khromova, head of the legal department at Bank Rost, adding “we have already corrected everything and sent draft documents to the regulator, we’re going to approve the amendments on October 24 at a shareholders meeting and will forward original documents to the Bank of Russia. I hope that we’ll get the green light to go through reorganization within a month from this moment”.
But if the Bank of Russia objects to the bank’s reorganization for any reasons, but it has no formal reasons for the refusal, the regulator has a lot of reasons to extend the approval deadline until required grounds are found, Kommersant writes.
