Alfa-Bank Ukraine, at the request of Interfax-Ukraine, confirmed that the remote meeting of the bank’s shareholders scheduled for August 12 had taken place and its decision to change the name of the bank to a new one – JSC Sense Bank will be made public next week.
“When the board decided on a new brand, the decision became obvious. For the last two years, our priority has been the development of the Sense SuperApp digital bank. Our bank has always been technological. This feature is now reflected in the name,” Chair of the bank’s Board Alla Komisarenko is quoted in the response.
The financial institution said that the meeting was one of the key stages in the legal procedures for changing the name, and the next step would be the registration of a new charter.
As previously noted in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, ex-Minister of Finance of Bulgaria Simeon Djankov, who in the middle of April, in agreement with the National Bank, was given the right to vote in the majority stake in Alfa-Bank, the board of the financial institution decided to abandon the Alfa brand and continue working under a new brand.
“A few days after the start of the war, the board decided to abandon the Alfa-Bank brand. The bank does not want to have anything to do with the aggressor country, even at the level of associations and the brand that operates in Russia,” Djankov said, explaining the reasons for the renaming.
According to the bank, its largest shareholders at the moment indirectly are Andrei Kosogov (40.9614%, after the war he received packages of German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev, who fell under the sanctions in the amount of 20.9659% and 16.3239%, respectively), Mykhailo Fridman (32.8632%), Petr Aven (12.4018%), UniCredit S.p.A. (Italy, 9.9%), Mark Foundation for Cancer Research (3.8736%). Djankov is a trustee of the NBU on the packages of Kosogov and Fridman and Aven, who fell under the sanctions.
Alfa-Bank Ukraine, according to the NBU, as of July 1, 2022, ranked seventh in terms of total assets (UAH 104.03 billion) among 68 banks operating in the country. The bank’s net loss, according to the National Bank, amounted to UAH 2.35 billion.
