Bank TuranAlem JSC (Kazakhstan) to buy a bank in Tatarstan

/AK&M, December 6, 04, by Bank TuranAlem JSC/ - Kazakhstan bank TuranAlem (BTA) examines the possibility of buying a bank in Tatarstan. The bank's financial director Erik Sultankulov has informed journalists about it in Kazan. He has noted the bank prefers to buy the control share holding from the local bank's owners. At tat, BTA may prefer a universal bank with strong regional positions, and with no less than 5% stake of local market. Having called Omskbank as an example, Sultankulov described accessible for BTA mechanism of controlling the joined bank. At present BTA has 19% of shares in Omskbank, subsidiary bank Slavinvest (Moscow) - 19%, partners of BTA - 38%. The Kazakh bank has also the option for the right to buy bank's shares from partners. Sultankulov also says in the future all subsidiary banks will have a single brand, for example, BTA-Slavinvestbank, BTA-Omskbank. The subsidiary banks network will be formed with the common corporate culture, single system of business organization. At the same time in many regions of Russia and other CIS countries BTA is opening and will open representatives, which will sell separate products, which subsidiary banks do not have. As regards building of the BTA network, on the whole area of all CIS countries, including Russia, the Kazakh bank has partners, who are ready to take part in this program, including international shareholders of BTA - Raiffeisen Zentralbank, IFC, EBRD, DEG. As Sultankulov says, at Russia's markets BTA plans to use actively its competitive advantages such as "long" money for 5-10 years and syndicated loans. [2004-12-07]