VEDOMOSTI. Shareholders of Severny Morskoy Put (SMP Bank) and the International Bank for Trade Cooperation (MBTS-Bank) took a decision to merge the banks, Vedomosti business daily wrote. According to SMP Bank’s FY06 IFRS financial statement, brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg own around 70% of SMP Bank (the shareholding structure was not disclosed in financials compiled later). In 2006 the Rotenbergs appeared in the shareholders list of midsized lender MBTS with an equity stake of 41.4%.
It makes no sense to run two banks, so business will be consolidated on the basis of SMP-Bank, while MBTS will lose its license, an SMP Bank representative said. The lending institution’s major shareholders will still be the Rotenberg brothers, the same source is confident, and will hold around 80% of the merged bank. The plan is to wrap up the merger by September 2009.
MBTS-Bank ranks 348th in terms of assets in the Interfax-100 ranking, prepared by Interfax-CEA, while SMP Bank is in 102nd place. Aggregate assets of both banks would take the merged bank to the 90th place by January. Its equity would total around Rub 5 bln.
The banking sector has so far seen few transactions of this kind, since banking business in the regions was successful in recent years and all lenders thought only how to expand their market shares, IFC Metropol senior analyst Mark Rubinstein said. Currently, operating efficiency and cost containment have taken central stage, so this year will see more regional mergers, he expects. For instance, the merger will mean capital upsizing and better CBR ratios for SMP, he specified.
For the record, the Rotenbergs along with SMP-Bank executive board chairman Dmitry Kalantyrsky own Latvian Multibanka, and last October they acquired Bashkortostan-based Investcapitalbank in order to fold it into SMP Bank at a later time.
