--Banks plan to ink deal by end of Friday
--Sberbank to pay almost $3.7 billion for Denizbank
--Russian government selling Sberbank stake
(Adds detail in paragraphs 3 and 4.)
By Alexander Kolyandr
MOSCOW--Struggling French-Belgian lender Dexia SA (DEXB.BT)
plans to agree a deal by the end of Friday to sell its Turkish
Denizbank AS (DENIZ.IS) business to Russia's biggest bank, OAO
Sberbank (SBER.RS), for just under $3.7 billion, a person familiar
with the matter told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.
Dexia and Sberbank launched exclusive talks late May to forge a
deal that would be "the biggest in Sberbank's history," a person
told Dow Jones Newswires at the time.
Sberbank Chief Executive German Gref has described the Turkish
market is the bank's priority for mergers and acquisitions and
praised Denizbank as "probably the highest quality asset of those
on the Turkish market."
Dexia is being broken up under a plan initiated by the French
and Belgian governments after it came close to collapse in October.
The bank's reliance on short-term funding left it dangerously
exposed to the credit crunch prompted by last summer's deepening
European sovereign debt crisis.
The Denizbank acquisition may increase the Russian government's
chances of attracting investors in its renewed plan to sell a 7.58%
stake in state-controlled Sberbank later this year. The government
wants to reduce its stake in Sberbank, the country's oldest lender,
to a blocking minority of 25% by 2015.
Sberbank is pursuing expansion abroad and is trying to be
business-friendly at home. If completed, the acquisition will be
the banking giant's second purchase outside of the former Soviet
Union. In February, it bought Volksbank International, which
operates in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Ukraine.
The Russian economics ministry reiterated Thursday that it plans
to sell a Sberbank stake in 2012 along with other state assets as
part of a plan to raise RUB300 billion ($9.3 billion) this
year.
The Denizbank sale comes at a time when many West European banks
are selling assets in order to replenish capital and combat fallout
from the euro zone debt crisis. They also need to lift capital
buffers to satisfy stricter capital requirements.
Denizbank is one of Dexia's best assets and its disposal marks a
major step in the break-up plan. Talks with interested parties had
reportedly faltered in recent months, leading to concerns that the
business could ultimately be sold at a loss.
After dropping out from the talks to buy Denizbank in November,
Sberbank returned to the negotiating table in May.
According to media reports, Qatar National Bank was also
interested in buying Denizbank, seeking a price close to its book
value, which was about $2.7 billion at the end of the first
quarter.
Dexia has owned Denizbank since 2006. It was founded in 1938 as
a state-owned bank specializing in funding for the Turkish maritime
sector, according to its website. In 1997, the bank was acquired by
Zorlu Holding from the Privatization Administration as a banking
entity before being acquired by Dexia for a reported $2.4
billion.
It has about 600 branches and 10,826 employees and total assets
of TYL44.76 billion ($24 billion), the website says.
Write to Alexander Kolyandr at
alexander.kolyandr@dowjones.com
(Olga Razumovskaya in Moscow contributed to this article.)