Snoras thinking east in big way

  • 2006-03-08
  • From wire reports
VILNIUS - Snoras Bankas is reportedly mulling over a combined 29 million euro purchase of two small Russian banks as part of its ambitious expansion plans. Shareholders of Snoras, which is controlled by Russia's Konversbank, will vote on raising authorized capital or the acquisition at a March 15 meeting.


The prospective share issue would be minor and would not be related to the expected purchase of Russia's banks, said Vladimiras Streckis, director of the brokerage department at Snoras.

Agreements for purchasing the banks 's Invesbank and Grankom-bank 's have not been signed as yet, he added. He said the bank would reveal the scale of the new issue and the share price next week.

The Konversbank group said that talks over the takeover would be finalized soon and the transactions carried out as soon as necessary permissions from regulatory authorities are obtained. Investment ratings must also be given to Investbank and Grankombank, the group said.

Konversbank has also said it would acquire Russia's Interprogressbank.

The Russian group noted that Investbank and Grankombank management would remain unchanged, although the scale of operations of both banks will be expanded considerably.

As reported by Finasta, a Lithuanian brokerage, the assets of Investbank, which is active in the Kaliningrad exclave, stood at 1.5 billion rubles (157.9 million litas 's 45.5 million euros) as of September 2005.

Grankombank, which offers banking services in Yekaterinburg, had 3.4 billion rubles in assets as of September. Snoras, Lithuania's fourth largest bank in terms of assets, acquired 83 percent of Latvijas Krajbanka in 2005.

As of late 2005, Snoras held 3.2 billion litas in assets. The bank reported 40.4 million litas in unaudited net earnings, and said it would earmark 9.6 million litas for dividends.