Eighteen months ago, Boris Tymonkin, chairman of Ukrsotsbank, Ukraine’s fourth largest bank, ventured that most of Ukraine’s banking system would soon be in foreign hands. Today, less than half of the industry is owned by outsiders, but Mr Tymonkin knows the imminent transfer of Ukrsotsbank, which boasts almost 10,000 staff and 500 branches and outlets, from the grip of a home-grown tycoon into the hands of Italy’s Banca Intesa will soon tip the scales towards his prediction.
So far, France’s BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole, Austrian players Raiffeisen and Erste, Hungary’s OTP and Greece’s Eurobank, among others, have bought Ukrainian institutions. Ukrsotsbank is expected to be swallowed up by Intesa in a $1.3bn transaction some time in 2007, as soon as a typically messy court case pitching majority shareholder Viktor Pinchuk against a rival businessman with an interest in the bank is finally resolved.
