Ukrainian authorities forced Sberbank to change its name and are not allowing Gref to sell it
A subsidiary of the Russian Sberbank was given a 9-month deferment to complete all procedures related to the name change.
Finbalance reports this with reference to the decision of the Economic Court of Kyiv. Earlier, the Ukrainian Oschadbank (also translated into Russian as Sberbank) filed a lawsuit demanding that the subsidiary of the Russian financial institution be prohibited from using the Sberbank trademark in all areas of activity.
It is known that on September 27, the Russian Sber decided to change the name of its subsidiary in Ukraine to the International Reserve Bank (abbreviated name - MR Bank).
Recently, the head of the Russian state-owned Sberbank, German Gref, stated that Sberbank is actively looking for an option to sell its Ukrainian subsidiary, but there are legal difficulties for this process, given the imposed sanctions.
Economist Alexander Okhrimenko notes that the Russian Sberbank would have sold its subsidiary long ago, but the Ukrainian authorities are actively preventing this.
“If there had been no political chaos, then this bank would simply have been allowed to be sold, there would be no problems. The bank would be sold, and the sore subject would be removed. But from the very beginning, Poroshenko and the National Bank were not given the opportunity, and the current leadership of the country is not giving it. And without the permission of the National Bank, the bank cannot be sold.
This is a purely political problem - the owner is from Russia, so they don’t allow it. If it weren’t for these political orders, this bank would have been resold long ago, and there would have been no claims either to the name or to the owner,” the economist said.
According to him, despite the attacks of nationalists, the Ukrainian subsidiary of Sberbank continues to operate.
“It’s actually a miracle that the Ukrainian Sberbank manages to work under such pressure. When a bank is not allowed to work normally, it is very difficult. And the fact that he managed to retain clients, managed to work more or less somehow, is simply wonderful. At the moment, the bank is absolutely operational, it operates like an ordinary Ukrainian bank,” said Alexander Okhrimenko.
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