Where privatisation means a bigger market share for state banks

RUSSIA’S second-biggest bank, VTB Bank, had no trouble placing $3.3 billion-worth of shares before a February 17th deadline, despite recent wobbles in emerging markets. The shares, also offered in the form of global depository receipts, represent a mere 10% of the bank’s equity, leaving a solid 75.5% still owned by the state. What does investors’ eagerness to own scraps of state-owned Russian banks say about the industry?

First, that the sector has lots of room to grow—by 20% this year, some analysts predict. The assets of Russia’s entire banking system amount to a mere 75% of GDP; those of some individual banks in Britain and Switzerland account for more than 100% of their home country’s GDP.

Second, the industry will be dominated by state-owned banks for a long time to come. The top five account for 48% of all assets; Sberbank, the biggest, holds 58% of all retail deposits. A sale of another 10% of VTB is mooted for this year or next, along with 7.6% of Sberbank by 2014. But in the meantime Sberbank and VTB are both getting bigger and more competitive.

Sberbank is negotiating to buy Troika Dialog, a local asset manager and investment bank. VTB recently bought TransCreditBank, the country’s 13th-biggest bank, and is likely to snap up Bank of Moscow, the fifth-biggest, unless private banks thwart it. Alfa-Bank, Russia’s biggest private bank, is pressing for a public auction of Bank of Moscow, which is 64%-owned by the City of Moscow and came on the market after the sacking of Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow’s then mayor, in September.

Barclays, a British bank which bought a Russian lender in 2008, has given up the fight. On February 15th it said it would sell its Russian retail operations, writing off £ 243m ($393m) of goodwill. But this relates more to a general drive by Barclays to get out of less profitable businesses than a reflection on Russia. Many other foreign banks are still committed to the market.

Views of profitability depend on when you bought the asset and the assumptions made at the time, says Pavel Gurin, the chief executive of ZAO Raiffeisenbank, which is owned by Austria’s RZB Group. Along with UniCredit of Italy and Rosbank, 75%-owned by France’s Socié té Gé né rale, it leads the handful of foreign-owned banks in Russia with critical mass (critical enough that the central bank offered them extra liquidity during the financial crisis).

Raiffeisenbank had a fantastic year in Russia before the crisis, with a pre-tax return on equity of 52%. That return dropped to 18% in 2009 but analysts reckon things got better in 2010 and will continue to improve this year. The greatest promise lies in corporate and investment banking rather than in retail lending, where prices are set by Sberbank. But even there, money can be made. Socié té Gé né rale announced on February 16th that its Russian consumer business had returned to profit for the first time since the crisis.

The state-owned giants may even benefit outsiders by enhancing stability. There are still over 1, 000 smaller banks in Russia. Many should be closed or consolidated, some have murky ownership. But the 100 biggest banks are becoming more transparent and better run, say locals. Progress is slow but it is still progress.