Editiert am 19-11-06 um 03:49 PM durch den Thread-Moderator oder
Autor
Ja,@j77,schön dass die MC so schell gestiegen ist,war aber wie immer an der Börse auch
viel Glück dabei.Banca Generali find ich nicht so schlecht.Eine 2 Mrd MK kann ich mir schon vorstellen
bei der.(würde aber eher was mittelfristiges als kurzfristiges sein für mich,wenn ich kaufe)
@iwan:also ich kann auf der homepage nichts finden
Oh,ja seit der letzten Aval-KE:
....Die Bank Aval wurde 1992 gegründet. Zum Jahresende 2005 wies sie eine Bilanzsumme von €
3,4 Milliarden aus und war damit die zweitgrößte Bank des Landes. Mehr als 16.600 Mitarbeiter waren zum
Stichtag in 1.342 Bankstellen beschäftigt. Der Großteil dieser Filialen bietet die ganze Bandbreite an
Bankdienstleistungen. Insgesamt werden mehr als drei Millionen Kunden betreut
Gesellschafterstruktur:
Raiffeisen International 95,3 %
Andere 4,7%
@BBK_06:Stimmt ,auch ich sehe das so,dass nach der Aval KE sich wieder der Streubesitz verringern
wird.Guter Nebeneffekt bei der KE
Danke,+144% Gewinnsteigerung im schwierigen Kosovo in
den ersten 3.Q ist schon nett.Und dort werden wir noch lange eine Spitzenreiterrolle einnehmen,denn viele
andere Banken scheuen einfach Albanien und den Kosovo.Die kommen dann erst ,wenn es einfach und teuer
geworden,dort einzusteigen
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Wieder etwas für die
extrem Interessierten:
Von the banker
Foreign banks in shopping spree
Being Europe’s fourth-largest city by population, St Petersburg is highly
attractive to foreign banks, which are snapping up local players, and bringing in huge amounts of capital
to offer in loans to corporates and consumers. By Jules Stewart.
Competition in the St
Petersburg banking market is heating up, with local banks starting to feel the pressure from the
international majors that have been pouring substantial amounts of capital into the city. French bank
Société Générale, Austrian bank Raiffeisen and US bank Citibank are some of the global players that
are making an aggressive pitch for the corporate, as well as the fast-growing consumer market.
The foreign majors are bringing unheard of muscle to the St Petersburg market in a way that has
signalled a wake-up call for the local banks. “Russian banks will have to make more loan capital
available to their customers and offer them more attractive deals,” says a government official.
“Citibank has the resources and ability to grant a loan in two to three hours. A customer seeking a
loan at one of our banks might have to wait two or three days for his money. Our banks also lack
experience in credit scoring and they cannot absorb the sort of losses that wouldn’t ruffle a
feather at Citi or Raiffeisen, for example.
“Clearly there is pressure on the local
banks that have come under threat from the foreign entrants. Many of them are perceived as takeover
candidates. Perhaps a third are pygmies by international standards and they would not be missed, but we
still want to promote a strong domestic banking industry,” says the official.
The cost
of capital is a major issue for Russian banks in general: the official estimates that raising capital
costs the local banks about 10%, roughly twice the rate at which foreign banks can obtain funding.
Ambitious projects
Foreign banks have been mobilising their resources to
finance some of the city’s ambitious development projects. Raiffeisen’s parent company RZB
Group, for instance, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, extended a €65m
loan in June to build a state-of-the-art shopping complex, with the aim of attracting high-quality
international retailers to St Petersburg. The complex will be developed by French company Vinci
Construction Grands Projets.
Following Raiffeisen’s recent $550m takeover of Impexbank,
it has become the seventh-largest lender in the country. By taking a position in the market through
acquisition, rather than organic growth, Raiffeisen says it has saved itself four years’ work.
Sergei Donskoi, a banking analyst at Troika Dialog, says the move was logical: the foreign lender
had to work hard to push its brand in the regions. “In many places in Russia, Raiffeisen is an
unknown name,” he says. “People know few bank names – mainly Sberbank and
Vneshtorgbank.”
Raiffeisen has put St Petersburg high on its agenda for expansion in
the Russian market. In June, it announced the opening of two new offices in St Petersburg, focusing
heavily on the booming residential mortgage business.
Growth through acquisition is a
route likely to be followed by other foreign players. “Perhaps the real aim of every private bank
in Russia, bar one or two, is to sell out to foreigners at a fancy price,” says one foreign banker
in St Petersburg. “Impex went for almost three times its book value, and now sellers of the bigger
private banks are going to be arguing for four times or more.”
Sell-out
prophecy
That prophecy was fulfilled in June when Rosbank, Russia’s ninth-biggest
lender, sold a 10% stake to Société Générale for $317m, four times book value. According to
Rosbank’s official statement, the French banking group has the option to increase its stake to 20%.
Having opted for the transaction with Société Générale, Rosbank dropped its plans for an initial public
offering and called off its scheduled London shares listing.
“The transaction with
Société Générale has increased not only Rosbank’s credibility, it has also been a vote of
confidence to the whole banking system of Russia – a signal of the political and banking stability
in Russia given by foreign investors,” says German Aliyev, Rosbank’s deputy chief
executive.
Sweden’s SEB acquired local St Petersburg player PetroEnergo Bank for SKr600m
($84m) and there are strong rumours that other foreign banks, mainly HSBC and Standard Chartered, are
seeking a foothold in this vibrant market, possibly through acquisition.
“More
international banks are recognising the opportunities of doing business in this region,” says
Ruslan Belyaev, Citi’s director of corporate and investment banking in St Petersburg. “They
understand the need to be close to their large corporate customers. This trend has been quite visible
over the past four to five years. As for ourselves, we have found this a very congenial place to do
business. All the doors are open and one can get in to see the governor or officials at the central
bank.”
Mr Belyaev says that helping the bank’s multinational customers to find
their way through the maze of Russian currency control legislation is an important part of the business.
“This requires a large amount of paperwork in the pre- and post-transaction stages,” he says.
“The devil is in the detail and regulations are frequently changing. In our advisory capacity, we
are able to draw a client’s attention to the pitfalls.
“We also do a lot of
financing and, apart from our multinational clients, we are moving into financing of local companies that
recognise the advantages of using the international markets. Our treasury is working very actively to
promote hedging instruments for these corporates and help them to understand dealing with risk.”
Middle class pitch
Citi has been making an aggressive push for business from St
Petersburg’s burgeoning middle and upper middle class. Its main consumer business branch in St
Petersburg is the US giant’s largest in Europe, reflecting the bank’s ambition in this
segment of the market. “We are offering the full range of consumer products, from cards and
personal loans to wealth management and a wide option of investment products and offshore
business,” says Andrei Karyakin, who runs the bank’s consumer business in St Petersburg.
Citi has been expanding rapidly in the city in the past few years. It now has nine branch offices
and plans to have 15 by the end of the year, with plans for further expansion next year.
“One of the drivers of growth is the fact that St Petersburg is Europe’s fourth-largest
city by population, with a heavy concentration of business and industry that is helping to develop a more
affluent consumer,” says Mr Karyakin. “If you want to be in the banking business in
Russia, you have to be in St Petersburg. It is also important to be able to offer your customers
first-rate service because people are becoming more banking sophisticated and demanding. We set ourselves
apart by giving personalised advice and assigning our customers a personal relationship
manager.”
Citi has lowered the threshold for private banking clients considerably. It is
prepared to provide a relationship manager for St Petersburg customers with liquid assets of as little as
$10,000, compared with the $100,000 to $500,000 benchmark set by most of its competitors.
“There is greater demand for personalised products and services here than in Moscow, and
borrowers are showing a high level of solvency,” says Mr Karyakin. “We have responded to
market demands by offering innovative services, such as 24-hour telephone banking. Others will
undoubtedly follow in our footsteps, but we enjoy the advantage of having been the first to place these
products in the market.”
Struggle ahead
Local Russian banks will
undoubtedly struggle to retain market share, faced with the vast resources and sophistication that
foreign banks can muster. Viktor Titov, vice-president of the Association of Banks of the North-West,
says he is fully aware that capitalisation is a problem for the banks and that this has translated into a
relatively low rate of efficiency. “But it is important to bear in mind that the Russian banking
system in its present form is only 15 years old,” he emphasises.
“We believe the
government, which has accumulated large financial resources thanks to record oil prices, should inject
some capital into the banking system. Most of the banks
are focusing on the retail side of the
business in order to build up their capital base and, as a consequence, the corporate sector is
developing at a slower pace.”
Lending boom
Mr Titov regards the boom
in mortgage lending as one of the ways forward for the banks. “This is becoming a dynamic area of
business but it is important for the banks to understand the risks involved in this activity. The
business is still in its infancy and there is a lack of infrastructure, in terms of credit scoring,
brokers and insurers.”
Nevertheless, the number of mortgages granted to St Petersburg
home buyers is set to double this year, as growing competition and falling interest rates force banks to
offer their customers new and more attractive loans. Last year, local banks sold 5000 mortgages valued at
about $208.9m. Local bank Sberbank Rossii was the biggest lender, with 1514 loans. Industrial and
Construction Bank took second place with 473 loans, City Mortgage Bank, Delta Credit, Raiffeisen and
Vneshtorgbank (now VTB) were the other big players in this segment of the market.
Igor
Zhigunov, head of City Mortgage Bank in St Petersburg, says that last year the average size of a mortgage
varied between $30,000 and $35,000, compared with about $30,000 in 2004. He adds that the increase in
national gold and monetary reserves, growth in real income and higher levels of investment into fixed
capital were the key factors in the growth of mortgage lending.
Tatiana Khobotova, mortgage
and consumer lending department head at VTB, is optimistic about the outlook for mortgage lending in the
near term. “This year, we expect the volume of mortgages granted to St Petersburg customers to
quadruple,” she says. “This estimate is based on recent experience, as last year the volume
of mortgages granted by VTB grew 3.5 times.”
Lora Fainzilberg, managing director of
operations at St Petersburg’s Delta Credit, says that in 2005 Russia experienced high growth in
mortgage lending, which was reflected in increasing competition, a fall in interest rates and the
introduction of new, more attractive mortgage schemes. “Last year, we doubled our mortgage
portfolio, with 2300 loans with a total value of about $113m. Banks are increasingly focused on mortgages
and have begun to introduce new and more flexible deals for their customers,” she says.
Alexander Ivanov, director of AKB Rus-Bank in St Petersburg, says that doubling the volume of mortgages
in the city is an achievable target. Rus-Bank signed an agreement with City Mortgage Bank last year to
co-operate in mortgage lending. And this year, it launched a joint programme with the St Petersburg
Agency for Mortgage Lending. “Our branch is planning to issue some $2.8m in mortgages by the end of
this year,” Mr Ivanov says.
Locals join the fray
Most local banks have
expanded their mortgage and consumer lending portfolios. Alexander Kirillovykh, chairman of St Petersburg
bank Baltinvest, says his bank adopted a shift in strategy last year to make a bigger push for the
consumer market (previously, it was focused primarily on the corporate sector). This strategy has been
supported by the expansion of the bank’s branch network in the city: four new offices are due to
open by the end of the year, bringing the St Petersburg network to 11 branches.
Baltinvest is
also making an aggressive pitch for the car loan market, which is growing thanks to the arrival of major
foreign manufacturers setting up assembly plants in the city. “The auto loans portfolio has been
expanding by $2m-$3m a month this year,” says Mr Kirillovykh. “We are also actively engaged
in the home loan market. Since we launched our first mortgage product this year, lending has increased by
$2m per month, a figure we expect to see reach a rate of $7m monthly by the end of the year.”
So far, non-performing loans have been held at 0.5% of the loan book, a level that Mr Kirillovykh
considers manageable and that he expects to remain stable in the near term,
allowing the bank to
pursue a policy of expansion in the consumer loan sector.
“Auto loans and mortgages now
account for roughly 10%-15% of our business,” he says. “We would expect to see this grow to
up to 30% by the end of the year and perhaps as high as 40% in 2007.”
The bank’s
level of bad debts compares favourably with the regional average of 2% for consumer lending, a figure
that the authorities consider an uncomfortable level. “This represents a 100% increase from last
year and at the current rate, it could go as high as 4% next year,” says a government banking
official. “If it reaches 5%, we will have a full-blown crisis on our hands.”
Russian competitors
Dmitry Oliyunin, deputy chairman of state-owned VTB, which is
headquartered in St Petersburg, acknowledges the pressure from foreign banks but he says that the main
competition is coming from large domestic and regional players. “We have been
focusing
our strategy on developing a more competitive business model,” he says. “For instance, while
in the past a customer had to apply for a car loan through one of our city branches, these facilities are
now available directly at the dealer’s showroom.”
According to Mr Oliyunin, one of
VTB’s competitive edges vis-à-vis foreign entrants is shorter lines of communication. “We
have fast communication channels with all our executive offices and this enables us to take quick
decisions,” he says. “We are also the undisputed leader in the local small and medium-sized
enterprise market, with about a 30% market share.”
VTB has helped to set in motion a
trend that could prove to be a key factor in confronting much larger foreign as well as domestic
competitors. The bank, Russia’s second largest, last year agreed a merger with Promstroibank (PSB)
to create a new entity with assets of about Rbs770bn ($28.8bn). The deal, which is expected to obtain
final approval before the end of the year, cost VTB $577m and the two banks are now in the process of
merging their product lines and IT platforms. “The task now is to integrate the two banks and
ensure that we preserve our competitive advantages in the market ahead of next year’s planned
IPO,” says Mr Oliyunin.
For the moment, there are no plans for any dramatic expansion of
the branch network. VTB operates 52 branches across Russia, of which 29 are in St Petersburg and the
Leningrad Oblast. “We feel this is the right size for servicing our consumer and corporate
customers,” he says. “We are looking forward to launching the newly merged bank, which we
believe will be a formidable player in the local market.”
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Nach der Eishockey WM wird die Marke Raiffeisen bekannter
sein auch im letzten Nest.
Ja der russische Markt wird noch ein grösserer Hit für uns werden,als er
es jetzt schon ist
Stay Long