Move would make Ukraine's third-largest bank first to go international
via, Privatbank – one of Ukraine’s three largest banks – could soon be operating in Poland.
Privatbank’s Oleh Serha told the Post on Feb. 1 that his bank is currently in talks to acquire Budbank, a small and nearly defunct Polish bank. The Privatbank group plans to build the bank into a competitive universal banking institution in Poland.
“The goal of our expansion is to expand our network of universal services outside of Ukraine,” Serha said.
No other details were released.
Dnipropetrovsk-based Privatbank, a leading Ukrainian bank in terms of net assets and branch network size, has 1,704 branch offices and 2,114 automatic teller machines in the country. Standard & Poor’s rates Privatbank as the largest commercial bank in Ukraine, with assets of Hr 14.2 billion ($2.7 billion) as of June 30, 2004. The bank has an 11.2 percent market share of customer loans on the Ukrainian market and controls 12.3 percent of client deposits in Ukraine. It also holds leading positions in retail banking.
Privatbank’s most recent acquisition, Latvia’s Paritate Banka, announced last year, makes Privatbank the first banking group in Ukraine to expand abroad.
Privatbank’s subsidiary in Russia, Moskomprivatbank, has a nationwide branch network of 64 institutions.
In an interview last year, Gennady Bogolubov, one of three principle owners of the so-called Privat business group, told the Post that he and his partners control many industrial assets in Ukraine and abroad through a network of companies. The group owns one metallurgical plant in Ukraine and has interests in key raw material suppliers for the steel industry, yielding it significant leverage over competitors that own steel mills.
The group’s assets also include five ferro-alloy plants – two in Ukraine and one each in Romania, Russia and Poland. Privatbank shareholders also have a strong hold on Ukraine’s petroleum market through its network of 700 gasoline filling stations, Ukraine’s largest oil drilling company, and two refineries.
