Experienced personnel are withdrawn from the reserve – Newspaper Kommersant No. 36 (7481) dated 03/02/2023
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The modest Moscow National Reserve Bank (NRB), which recently changed hands, may soon get a new chairman. According to Kommersant’s information, they may be the ex-head of SMP Bank, sold to Promsvyazbank at the end of 2022, Alexander Levkovsky. In addition to him, as expected, other experienced financiers, including Vladimir Potapov, a native of VTB, are expected to join the board of directors of the NRB. Kommersant’s sources believe that the new team should create, on the basis of a small but clean, sanctions-free bank, a serious player in the international settlements market.
Sources of Kommersant in the financial market said that the former head of SMP Bank Alexander Levkovsky came to the National Reserve Bank as an adviser. One of Kommersant’s interlocutors claims that after agreement with the Central Bank, Mr. Levkovsky may take the post of chairman of the board of the NRB. Since February 1, Sergey Bazanov has been acting as Acting Chairman of the Board in the NRB. Mr. Levkovsky refrained from commenting, the bank did not respond to Kommersant’s request.
Alexander Levkovsky has worked at Promsvyazbank (PSB) since 1995, from where he moved to SMP Bank in 2011 (sold to PSB at the end of 2022). In terms of assets and capital, the NRB at the beginning of last year was outside the top hundred in the Russian Federation. The bank has long been an asset of businessman Alexander Lebedev, but in 2019 the owners began to change.
The last known owner of the NRB was the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB, Kazakhstan), which in July 2022 bought more than 80% from STLC for 3.39 billion rubles. Recently, from the EDB’s reporting for 2022, it became known that 100% of NRB shares were sold again for 3.89 billion rubles. and “non-cash consideration in the form of a share in a Russian company” in December 2022.
New owners are not disclosed. According to Kommersant’s sources, the bank was received by nominees, while the real beneficiaries may be “top managers who worked in the largest Russian financial institutions.” As Frank Media reported yesterday, Vladimir Potapov, who led VTB Capital for many years, headed NRB Capital. According to Kommersant’s sources, Messrs. Potapov and Levkovsky will join the board of directors of the NRB.
In its December rating report on NRB, ACRA wrote that “the lack of an approved new strategy for the bank and the low contribution to the formation of its financial result and resource base indicate limited interest in potential shareholder support.” Over the year, the capital of the NRB decreased by 8.8%, to almost 6.2 billion rubles. at the beginning of February.
The new owners of NRB, Kommersant’s sources say, plan to develop international settlements on the basis of the bank, which have been badly affected by large market participants due to sanctions pressure. The new management has the relevant competencies: in SMP Bank, Alexander Levkovsky gained experience in managing a credit institution that has been under US blocking sanctions since 2014.
“In conditions when the largest Russian banks are subject to sanctions one after another, the development of a system of international settlements that are immune to sanctions is perhaps the most important task for the immediate development of the banking system. A small bank, unaffected by sanctions, is perfect for this task,” says Ilya Zharsky, managing partner of the Veta expert group.
Recently, former top managers of large and small banks “have become fashionable to buy banks,” given that such new owners have the opportunity to assemble a unique team, says Dmitry Kurbatsky, managing partner of FG Dmitry Donskoy. As an example, the expert cites Freedom Finance: a holding controlled by Timur Turlov sold a bank and an investment company to Maxim Povalishin in the fall of 2022 for $140 million. sanctions, build a brokerage business through satellite companies.”
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