Russia’s Gazprombank explores options for Swiss business, including sale

ZURICH, July 8 (Reuters) – Russia’s Gazprombank is checking out strategic selections for its Swiss business, together with a possible sale of all or components of it, Zurich-primarily based Gazprombank Switzerland reported on Friday.

Gazprombank (GZPRI.MM) is 1 of the previous remaining channels for funding trade flows amongst Russia and Switzerland because the other key Russian banks are topic to sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Its Swiss organization, which employs about 80 people today, is mostly energetic in trade and export funding, like assisting Swiss industrial groups finance exports to Japanese Europe. It also funds the extraction, transportation and processing of raw materials from Russia to Western Europe for commodity traders.

“The Lender at this time expects to conclude the strategic evaluation course of action – which includes locating an trader if this sort of alternative is pursued – by the conclusion of the third quarter of 2022,” it claimed.

Dependent on equity of about 200 million Swiss francs, the bank could be valued at about 150 million Swiss francs ($154 million), a person business resource, who declined to be named, said.

Achievable buyers for areas or all of Gazprombank could be economic buyers or other financial institutions, a Gazprombank Switzerland spokesperson reported, declining to remark on a valuation.

Commodity traders could also be intrigued in Gazprombank Switzerland, the sector supply advised Reuters, and the very first likely consumers have currently expressed fascination.

“It is the duty of the Board of Administrators to routinely evaluation the strategic orientation of a bank and to realign the company product if important,” the spokesperson reported when asked regardless of whether present or prospective intercontinental sanctions experienced induced the strategic evaluate.

Asked about any doable affect from the Swiss Financial Market place Supervisory Authority FINMA, the lender spokesperson said: “The initiated approach critique is in the bank’s have interest and not thanks to external force.”

Gazprombank Switzerland was strongly capitalised and operationally effectively positioned, the spokesperson added.

In accordance to the hottest publicly out there info, Gazprombank Switzerland produced a gain of 3 million francs in the to start with 50 percent of 2021, down from 4 million in the year-ago time period.

Gazprombank is not the only Swiss subsidiary of a key Russian financial institution that may possibly shortly alter hands.

FINMA has eased the restrictions from Sberbank (Switzerland) AG (SBER.MM). This would let the bank to cut down its equilibrium sheet in perspective of a attainable sale or modify of possession, the watchdog mentioned this thirty day period. read more

($1 = .9744 Swiss francs)

Reporting by Oliver Hirt, Producing by Michael Shields, Modifying by Paul Carrel and Alexander Smith

Our Criteria: The Thomson Reuters Believe in Concepts.