ABH Holdings SA. (ABHH, Luxembourg) will seek protection under a bilateral Belgium-Luxembourg-Ukraine investment protection agreement if Ukraine nationalizes the Sense Bank (Sense Bank, formerly Alfa Bank, Kiev) it owns, which implies filing suit in an international court if the country refuses voluntary compensation for lost investments.
“If Sense Bank JSC is nationalized, the losses for ABHH will be significant, so ABHH will take appropriate measures in terms of both national and international law and available treaties to compensate them,” the holding company said in a statement Saturday.
ABHH points out that Law No. 9107-1 on the procedure for withdrawal from the market (nationalization) of banks owned by subsanctioned persons has already been signed by the president of Ukraine, so the holding company is seriously concerned that the National Bank of Ukraine will carry out its intention to nationalize Sens Bank without compensating ABHH beyond the nominal amount.
“The new law is aimed at the withdrawal of banks owned by sanctioned individuals. However, the nationalization of Sense Bank JSC will result in losses for non-sanctioned persons, including bondholders and non-sanctioned shareholders of ABHH,” the statement said.
According to the holding’s capital structure, these are The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research and Italian Unicredit s.p.a., which own 3.8736% and 9.9%, respectively.
The main shareholders of ABHH are Mikhail Fridman – 32.8632%, Petr Aven – 12.4018% and Andrei Kosogov – 40.9614%, on whose shares the National Bank last April appointed Simeon Dyankov, the former Minister of Finance of Bulgaria, as a trustee.
Earlier this week, ABHH said it had reached an agreement to sell Sense Bank’s 75.6% stake to an international investor for $1. ABHH recalled that in the autumn of 2022, the National Bank of Ukraine had sent a shareholder letter stating its willingness to transfer the bank into state ownership free of charge and voluntarily in case of such a decision by the regulators, but since no response to this letter was received, ABHH continued to look for an experienced and reliable investor.
According to the agency, the investor is one of Poland’s richest men, Zygmunt Solozh, co-owner of Grupa Polsat Plus. The Economic Pravda newspaper reported this week that documents were submitted to the National Bank by the Cypriot Karswell Ltd, the nominal owner of 43.75% of the shares of the Polish bank Plus Bank SA.
As of the beginning of May this year, Sense Bank, with assets of 97.19 billion hryvnias, was the 10th bank among 65 operating in Ukraine. The authorized capital of the bank amounted to 28.726 billion UAH, and equity capital – 7.49 billion UAH.
At the end of May this year, the Verkhovna Rada passed a law that envisages the nationalization of Sense Bank as a systemic bank on the basis of the presence of sub-sanctioned persons among its major shareholders.
The NBU, in its communications to date, has not allowed the possibility of agreeing a deal to sell the bank.
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