“It turned into a lender which financed its owners”: Central Bank.
It’s Friday, and another Russian bank gets taken over and most of its creditors get bailed out by the Central Bank, this time the 10th largest bank in Russia, Promsvyazbank – with the top six being state-owned banks; with number seven, Bank Otkritie, having toppled in August; with number 12, B&N Bank, having toppled in September; and with Jugra Bank having gotten its banking licence revoked in July for having falsified its accounts.
The bailout of Promsvyazbank (PSB) will require between 100 billion rubles and 200 billion rubles (between $1.7 billion and $3.4 billion), based on a preliminary estimate, said Central Bank deputy governor Vasily Pozdyshev on Friday, according to Reuters.
“Preliminary estimates” of bank-bailout costs have a way of morphing into bigger ones. The Central Bank, which is also the banking regulator, has already increased its estimate for the combined cost of the bailouts of Otkritie and B&N Bank to 820 billion rubles ($14 billion), but it now deems both too financially weak to continue.
The combined assets of PSB, Otkritie, and B&N would amount to 4 trillion rubles, equivalent to Russia’s fourth biggest bank, according to Reuters calculations. By comparison, Russia’s largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, accounts for one-third of the Russian banking system, as it says, and has 22 trillion rubles ($374 billion) in assets.
PSB’s subordinated debt will likely be written off, Pozdyshev said. Shareholders will also take a big hit or be wiped out. They include as of the end of November: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Russian financial group Budushchee, the Credit Bank of Moscow, and non-state pension fund Safmar.
But the Central Bank plans to honor the PSB’s other obligations to creditors and bondholders, which include other Russian banks. It always does this to avoid contagion.
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