On Tuesday Svyaznoy Bank will stop collecting bids from potential buyers of its overdue loans worth Rub 22 bln (234,700 accounts). The bank plans to sell its entire portfolio of 12M+ overdue loans in the short-term outlook. Information on the tender is posted on Zakupki.ru.
"The bank is electing leaders in terms of quotes offered for the purpose of further formation of the portfolio, its final assessment and receipt of an offer," said a press release posted on the purchase website. Bids will be accepted until March 31, 2015, 3 pm Moscow time.
The bank's debt put up for sale equals a half of its credit portfolio. As of March 1, 2015 the lender's credit portfolio amounted to Rub 39.6 bln. The sale of around a half of the bank's aggregate credit portfolio could send out a signal to the regulator that Svyaznoy Bank's new owners are concerned about solving its problems, business daily Kommersant wrote.
"If a bank is in trouble, but its executives do their best to solve problems, the Bank of Russia often makes advances to owners of banks and can give them some time to solve them," the paper's source from a Top 40 bank thinks. Last week control over Trellas, which is the bank's majority shareholder, was de facto assigned to Oleg Malis. The media reported that on March 26, 2015 that the District Court of Nicosia issued a ruling to abolish the ban imposed on three directors who were appointed by Oleg Malis's North Financial Overseas Company to act as directors of Trellas.
Furthermore, the sale of troubled loans can be another way of maintaining Svyaznoy Bank's capital adequacy ratio. Back in late February the lending institution's management board chairman Evgeny Davydovich sent a letter to the bank's shareholders that in line with the forecasts the bank's capital would total Rub 4.82 bln as of March 1, 2015, and with no capital injection of Rub 400 mln this would result in the violation of the capital adequacy ratio till February 28. Despite losses suffered in February (Rub 650 mln) the bank managed not to violate the ratio requirement, and as of March 1, 2015 Svyaznoy Bank's N1.0 equaled 10.56% vs. the minimum threshold of 10%. As business daily Kommersant previously wrote, this occurred as the Bank of Russia eased its anti-crisis risk assessment requirements and the bank divested some of its assets.
