Emirates NBD buys Turkey’s DenizBank from Russia’s Sberbank
By Andrei Skvarsky.By
By Andrei Skvarsky.
Emirates NBD, Dubai’s largest bank, has bought Turkey’s DenizBank from Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, which said “sanctions-related restrictions and a corresponding change in Sberbank’s international strategy” explained its decision to sell the Turkish firm.
Emirates NBD and Sberbank have said in statements that the sale has been completed now that regulators in the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Austria and Russia have given the go-ahead to the deal, in which the Dubai bank acquired a 99.85 per cent stake in the Turkish lender.
Sberbank bought DenizBank in 2012 in building out its international business.
“The decision to sell DenizBank is due to the sanctions-related restrictions and a corresponding change in Sberbank’s international strategy that will allow us to concentrate on further development of our ecosystem in Russia,” the statement quoted Sberbank CEO Herman Gref as saying.
Emirates NBD vice-chairman and managing director Hesham Abdulla Al Qassim said, in reference to the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey) region, that “only [a] few banks can claim to have a strong pan-regional presence”, and that “Emirates NBD is now looking to change this with DenizBank”.
Gref said that, after being acquired by Sberbank, DenizBank “made meaningful progress across all key areas, delivering growth in sales of products and services via digital channels, implementation of advanced risk management practices and risk culture improvement”.
“The number of DenizBank clients more than doubled during this period and the assets increased more than 3.5 times,” he said.
Sberbank bought DenizBank for about $3.5bn, according to Reuters, which cited Emirates NBD as saying in April that it would pay the Russian lender 15.48bn lira ($2.68bn) for the Turkish bank.
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