MOSCOW – Russia’s Central Bank Governor said on Friday that the sale of bailed-out lender Otkritie Bank to Russia’s No. 2 lender VTB Bank would go through before the end of the year.
“As for the sale of Otkritie, it is in the final stages,” Governor Elvira Nabiullina told a news conference. “We confirm out intention to complete the transaction by the end of this year.”
Both VTB and Otkritie have been targeted by Western sanctions over Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The central bank bailed out Otkritie, once Russia’s largest private lender, in 2017 as part of a years-long campaign to clean up Russia’s banking sector.
Otkritie had previously been linked with a possible sale to Italy’s UniCredit or even a public stock market launch before sanctions torpedoed plans for anything more than a domestic transaction.