PRESS: Russia’s Bank Trust to go through second bailout

MOSCOW, Apr 13 (PRIME) -- The central bank will hold a second tender very soon to bail out Bank Trust, and Otkritie Financial Corporation (FC) Bank is likely to win it as on Monday the regulator acknowledged the first bailout carried by the latter bank as satisfactory, Kommersant business daily reported Wednesday citing sources.

In late 2014, the central bank decided to bail out Bank Trust, one of Russia’s 30 largest banks by assets, and chose Otkritie FC Bank to do it. Initially, Otkritie FC Bank received a 127 billion ruble loan from the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), but in late 2015 the bank requested additional 50 billion rubles.

The regulator has been delaying terms of the second bailout tender as it wanted to assess Otkritie’s bailout, and after it was acknowledged as satisfactory, the bank will receive the right to participate in the second tender and there are no obstacles to the tender anymore, a source familiar with the matter told Kommersant.

This will be the first time the central bank has held a second bailout tender for a bank. Last week, DIA’s head Yury Isayev said that the idea here is to grant no additional funds to a bailout agent. There will also be some difficulties if another bank wins the tender, as it will be hard to transfer the asset to another participant, he said then.

The probability of Bank Trust receiving another bailout agent is very low, experts told Kommersant. “Otkritie has a deeper understanding of the bank’s actual condition, and its estimate of the bailout sum is likely to be the most relevant,” Denis Taradov, a partner at consulting group BDO, told the daily.

(66.3456 rubles – U.S. $1)

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