Antimonopoly Committee gives Tigipko permission to buy Idea Bank
13 December 2024 06:19
The Antimonopoly Committee has granted permission for Alkemi Limited (Cyprus) to acquire 100% of Idea Bank from Serhiy Tigipko’s TAS group. This is reported by "Komersant Ukrainian" with reference to the press service of the AMCU.
In October, TAS Group announced that it had agreed to acquire Idea Bank from the Polish group Getin Holding for $34 million.
“The AMCU’s approval is one of the important steps towards the completion of the agreement signed with Getin Holding (Poland) on the acquisition of shares in JSC Idea Bank by TAS Group,” the press service said, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
It is noted that the next and at the same time final step for the legal completion of the transaction should be the decision of the National Bank to approve a significant participation in JSC Idea Bank.
“The required package of documents has been submitted to the banking market regulator. The NBU’s decision is expected,” TAS Group said.
If the closing date of the transaction is later than December 31, 2024, Alkemi Limited will pay Getin Holding an additional $800,000 for each full calendar month starting from January 2025.
Idea Bank Ukraine operates in the retail banking segment and focuses on servicing individuals. The bank’s main products include cash loans, credit cards, deposits, current accounts and debit cards. As of June 30, 2024, the total balance sheet of Idea Bank amounted to almost $162 million.
This was the third attempt to sell the bank after failures with Dragon Capital and FUIB due to the pandemic and war.
In June 2020, the deal to sell Idea Bank to Ivan Svitek, former CEO of Alfa-Bank (Kyiv), and Ukrainian investment company Dragon Capital was terminated: the parties failed to agree on commercial terms within the agreed timeframe. Later, before the war, Dragon Capital and Svitek managed to buy Unex Bank from Vadym Novynskyi’s Smart Holding.
In February 2022, Getin Holding announced that it had failed to sell Idea Bank for the second time. The agreement on the terms of sale of its 100% stake to Rinat Akhmetov’s First Ukrainian International Bank (FUIB, Kyiv), signed on November 10, 2021, was terminated due to the failure to meet all the conditions for the transfer of ownership by February 25. Following the termination of the agreement with FUIB, Getin Holding refused to sell its Ukrainian subsidiary amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
On March 27, 2023, the NBU recognized the business reputation of both the Polish holding and its main owner Czarnecki as impeccable. In this regard, the Ukrainian regulator temporarily deprived Getin Holding of the right to vote for 100% of Idea Bank’s shares and set a one-year deadline for the holding and its main owner Leszek Czarnecki to eliminate the violation, and a year later refused to return the voting rights to the holding. In addition, the NBU approved Jacek Piechota, president of the Polish-Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, as a trustee of Idea Bank.
At the end of April this year, the NBU gave Getin Holding six months to sell its 100% stake in the authorized capital of Idea Bank. A similar demand was made of Czarnecki, who was required by the NBU to sell 44.98% of Idea Bank to Getin Holding within six months, offering as an alternative to sell Czarnecki’s stake in Getin Holding or LC Corp BV, which he owns and holds 34.17% in Getin Holding.
Subsequently, in October 2024, the board of Getin Holding and Serhiy Tigipko’s TAS Group signed a sale and purchase agreement for Idea Bank, with the base transaction amounting to $34 million.
Reference
Idea Bank (formerly Prykarpatlisbank, until 2011 – Plus Bank) was founded in 1989 and is one of the oldest banks in Ukraine. In June 2007, the Polish financial group Getin Holding SA of billionaire Leszek Czarnecki became the sole shareholder of Idea Bank.
TAS Group is one of the largest financial and industrial groups in Ukraine, represented in banking, insurance, car building, metallurgy, packaging materials, logistics, and agriculture.
