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Top 1000 World Banks - Resurgent Russian banks dominate in CEE ranking

Russian banks dominate the 2017 central and eastern Europe rankings, with more making it into the Top 1000. And while Ukraine’s State Savings Bank has moved up the list, it is the country’s only bank left in the ranking. Stefanie Linhardt reports.
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CEE 2017

Banks in central and eastern Europe (CEE) have seen an overall increase in capital in the 2017 Top 1000 ranking. The aggregate Tier 1 capital of the top 25 banks in the region rose to $114.4bn, compared with last year’s $91.7bn, largely driven by the strong pick-up in figures by Russian banks.

Russia’s largest bank, state-owned Sberbank, has increased its Tier 1 capital by nearly $14.5bn since the 2016 ranking, making it comfortably the largest bank in the region. The increase also saw it rise in the overall ranking, from last year’s 51st place to 36th this year. Sberbank also has one of the region’s highest returns on capital with 24.82%.

Almost all Russian banks increased their capitalisation – the exception being Russian Agricultural Bank – and Russian results were favourably influenced by a 16.77% stronger Russian rouble to US dollar exchange rate (the currency of The Banker’s Top 1000 ranking).

Overall, 16 Russian-owned banks have made it into this year’s Top 1000, compared with 11 last year, and 14 of these are in the regional top 25. Bank Rossiya, at 22 in the CEE ranking last year, drops out of the Top 1000 this year as The Banker did not have access to its latest reports.

Russian banks also constitute eight of the region’s 10 highest movers, with six increasing their capitalisation by more than 50%. Sovcombank is a new entry into the Top 1000 following several acquisitions between 2014 and 2016.

Apart from Russian Agricultural Bank, Banca Transilvania, Getin Noble Bank and Moneta Money Bank, all the banks in the CEE top 25 have increased their capitalisation.

One of the highest movers in the CEE table is Ukraine’s State Savings Bank, which has re-entered the Top 1000 at 966 with $491m of Tier 1 capital – despite another 13.29% drop in the Ukrainian hryvnia compared to 2016’s ranking.

State Savings Bank of Ukraine was a major casualty in 2016’s ranking, when its capital fell from $1.22bn in 2014 to $289m in 2015. It is now the only Ukrainian bank in the Top 1000 after the country’s largest bank by assets, Privatbank, was nationalised at the end of 2016.

Other banks to drop out of the region’s top 25 are Belarus’s Belagroprombank (18th last year), whose capital dropped from $757m to $525m, as well as the banks positioned a respective 23rd, 24th and 25th in 2016: Slovakian Postova Banka, Bulgarian First Investment Bank and Slovenian Abanka (despite the latter increasing its capitalisation from $491m to $521m in this year’s ranking).

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