Russia's top lender Sberbank has received a very good offer for its Turkish unit Denizbank, Sberbank's head German Gref told reporters on Tuesday. He also said that the bank had accumulated 40 billion rubles ($693 million) in net profit from foreign subsidiaries, while the bank had no plans to expand overseas.
Sberbank announced late January the initiation of strategic negotiations to include the option of the purchase of shares in Denizbank by Emirates NBD, the United Arabic Emirates' (UAE) largest bank.
Emirates NBD is the second largest bank in the Gulf region with total assets of approximately $118 billion as of December 2017.
Some 99.85 percent of DenizBank was sold to Sberbank on Sept. 28, 2012 for $3.45 billion. Today the market value of the bank is over $5 billion. If Sberbank and Emirates NBD agree on the issue, DenizBank will get its fifth owner.
Denizbank's total consolidated assets amounted to around TL 152 billion (around $40.2 billion) as of Sept. 30, 2017; while it consolidated equity is around TL 12.3 billion ($3.24 billion). The bank employs over 14,000 people in 740 branches.
Sberbank CEO Herman Gref said in a statement to Anadolu Agency (AA) in October 2017 that DenizBank was their most important asset among all its assets abroad. Gref said they felt very comfortable in Turkey and they saw it as their second homeland.
"We will continue to protect our interests in Turkey and maintain our support for infrastructure projects with great enthusiasm, because we know that Turkey has ambitious plans in this regard," he added.
