2011年10月14日 星期五

Swedbank to scale back after big losses

After paying billion-dollar price tags to buy their way into Ukraine’s bank sector, only to end up saddled with piles of bad debt during the 2008-09 economic crisis, European banks that once had a 40 percent market share are sharply scaling back.ceramic Floor tiles for the medical,

They’re doing so to limit overexposure to a once-promising market now categorized as “risky.”

Latest figures show a troubling trend reminiscent of the crisis three years ago, with retail deposits contracting by Hr 2.7 billion and the central bank’s foreign reserves plunging 8.4 percent in September.

On Sept.As many processors back away from Cable Ties , 19,This will leave your shoulders free to rotate in their chicken coop . the nation’s 20th largest bank by assets – Sweden’s Swedbank – announced that it is rolling down retail operations with plans to chisel its nationwide 170-branch network to 10 by September.Initially the banks didn't want our RUBBER SHEET .

The bank is urging local deposit clients to collect the full amount of interest accrued on their accounts to date during the early deposit agreement termination lasting until Nov. 30. Regarding its 170 bank branch offices in Ukraine, Swedbank said it has no specific plans for a network selloff although it is willing to consider purchase offers.

Swedbank’s Ukrainian subsidiary posted a net profit of $5.5 million for the first half of 2011, 7.3 percent down year-on-year. But the relatively small profits don’t show the entire picture and pain that the Swedish banking group has felt in Ukraine.

Like most banks in the nation, it has since the 2008 global financial crisis relied heavily on large capital infusions from its parent group, with double-digit non-performing loan levels.

Anastasia Tuyukova, a banking analyst at Kyiv-based Dragon Capital, said more than $8 billion in fresh capital was injected by private investors ($4 billion from European parent groups) into Ukrainian subsidiary banks since late 2008 just to keep them financially afloat.

Nearly $600 million in fresh capital was pumped into Swedbank’s Ukrainians subsidiary in this period, according to Tuyukova.Save on Bedding and fittings, That is painfully close to the $1 billion the Swedes paid to buy the bank years earlier from current Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko.

Swedbank said the decision to scale down in Ukraine is part of a strategic shift.

Increasingly, the focus of Swedbank and other European banks in Ukraine will now be not on lending to a cash-strapped middle class, but to the corporate segment – yet another sign that the only ones prospering in the nation’s economy nowadays are billionaires and their companies. In an identical move last year, Swedbank started the process of phasing out of Russia’s retail market.

“In general, European banks have enough issues at hand at home [with the Euro debt crisis] so their strategies in ‘perennially troubled’ Ukraine are likely to be defensive – including closing down retail banking altogether,” said Konstantin Golovynsky, an analyst at the Ukraine office of Renaissance Capital.

“More banks may well follow,” he cautioned.

Dutch ING Bank exited Ukraine’s retail banking segment in 2009.

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