State-owned Oschadbank and Ukrgasbank, together with PUMB, issued a loan of UAH 2.8 billion to a defense industry enterprise in the fourth quarter of 2024 under the Program for Strengthening the State’s Defense Capabilities and Meeting the Urgent Needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to information on the website of the Ministry of Finance.
As clarified to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency by Oschadbank, the bank acted as the organizer of this consortium loan, which was the first loan to the domestic defense industry.
“As the coordinating bank for this agreement, Oschadbank has set itself the main task of creating a consortium not so much to diversify risks as to set a precedent for involving banks that do not have access to state secrets in the financing of defense industry enterprises,” commented Yuriy Katsion, deputy chairman of the board of Oschadbank, responsible for corporate business.
The shares of the participants in the consortium loan are not disclosed.
As reported, since the start of the full-scale war, Oschadbank has concluded loan agreements to support the defense industry worth over UAH 17.1 billion.
According to the Ministry of Finance, in 2024, the state-owned Oschadbank, Ukreximbank, Ukrgasbank, and PUMB provided 11 loans under state guarantees to defense industry enterprises under the above-mentioned program in the amount of UAH 21 billion. Excluding the consortium, Oschadbank issued six loans worth UAH 9.86 billion, and Ukreximbank issued four loans worth UAH 8.25 billion.
A year earlier, Oschadbank provided a loan worth UAH 6.09 billion under this program, and Ukreximbank provided a loan worth UAH 5.98 billion.
According to information from the Ministry of Finance, in 2024, state-owned Oschadbank, Ukreximbank, Ukrgasbank, and PUMB provided 11 loans under state guarantees to enterprises in the defense-industrial complex (DIC) under the Program for Strengthening the State’s Defense Capabilities and Meeting the Urgent Needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
According to the information, Oschadbank became the largest lender, issuing six loans worth UAH 9.86 billion and participating in a consortium loan together with Ukrgasbank and PUMB worth UAH 2.38 billion.
In turn, Ukreximbank provided four loans totaling UAH 8.25 billion.
According to the Ministry of Finance, in 2023, only two loans were provided under state guarantees under the Program for Strengthening the State’s Defense Capabilities: Oschadbank for UAH 6.09 billion and Ukreximbank for UAH 5.98 billion.
As reported to Interfax-Ukraine by Oschadbank, since the start of the full-scale war, the bank has participated in lending to defense industry enterprises in the amount of over UAH 17.1 billion.
“Oschadbank has historically lent to state-owned defense industry companies, so we know better than anyone how difficult it was to simplify access to bank loans for privately owned defense companies and how important this is for the development of the industry,” said Yuriy Katsion, deputy chairman of the board of Oschadbank, responsible for corporate business.
State-owned Oschadbank (Kyiv) earned UAH 4.8 billion in net profit in the first quarter of 2025, keeping the result at the level of the previous year, while net interest income increased by 39%, according to a press release from the financial institution.
“The current profit is driven by operating activities and was achieved through the efforts of the bank’s team aimed at continuing business growth. In response to the challenges posed by rising inflation, Oschad is actively improving its cost control mechanisms,” Oschadbank Chairman of the Board Serhiy Naumov commented on the results.
It is noted that in the first quarter of 2025, net interest income amounted to about UAH 7.4 billion, which is 39% or UAH 2 billion more than in the first quarter of 2024, while Oschadbank’s operating profit for this period amounted to almost UAH 5 billion.
“Currently, Oschadbank has sufficient liquidity and capital. Thus, the regulatory capital adequacy ratio of Oschadbank as of April 1, 2025 is 13.10%, which is significantly higher than the current NBU regulatory value of 9.25%,” the bank said.
According to the National Bank of Ukraine, as of the beginning of 2025, Oschadbank ranked second in terms of total assets (UAH 963.39 billion, or 12.4%) among 61 banks in the country.
The bank’s net profit for 2024 amounted to UAH 7.9 billion, compared to UAH 6 billion in 2023, while operating profit increased by 20% to more than UAH 14 billion.
Oschadbank has put up for sale at auction the right to claim under loan agreements and relevant security agreements to borrowers of Oleg Bakhmatyuk’s Ukrlandfarming group of companies at a starting price of UAH 4,984,663,467.30 (excluding VAT), the bank’s press service reports.
According to the report, the property of Rise-Maximco PJSC, Avangard Agroholding PJSC, Impevo Foods LLC, and Pacco Holding LLC is up for auction.
These loans are secured by production assets throughout Ukraine, including elevators, poultry farms, an egg processing plant, etc., as well as guarantees from individuals and legal entities.
The auction is scheduled for April 14, 2025.
“Ukrlandfarming is one of the largest agricultural holdings in Eurasia. It is engaged in grain growing, cattle breeding, distribution of machinery, fertilizers and seeds.
“UkrLandFarming remains one of the largest agricultural holdings in Ukraine, despite $1.2 billion in losses from Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. In particular, we are talking about the largest poultry farm in Europe, Chornobaivska (Kherson region), where 4.5 million poultry were killed, property and communications were destroyed, and the occupiers took the equipment to the territory of the Russian Federation. The enemy also destroyed a number of poultry farms in other regions: poultry farms in Mykolaiv region, Donetsk region (Donetsk poultry farm, as well as in Volnovakha and Bakhmut), and poultry farms in Kyiv region were destroyed, looted or significantly damaged by shelling. The company lost 160,000 hectares of arable land for agricultural production, and regional bases and elevators in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions, as well as in Kyiv region and near Kyiv, were destroyed and looted.
A significant portion of ULF’s financial obligations have been in default since 2017. In November 2017, a group of international creditors, Ukrlandfarming and Avangard, in a letter to the Ukrainian government, estimated the total amount of ULF’s debt obligations at approximately $1.65 billion: about $1.25 billion of debt obligations to international creditors and about $400 million to Ukrainian banks (including state-owned banks). In turn, the debt to international creditors, according to their data, amounted to approximately $775 million in the form of Eurobonds and $475 million in the form of loans to European and American banks (and their respective credit risk insurers).
Oschadbank and the state-owned energy trader Energy Company of Ukraine (ECU) have signed a memorandum of cooperation to simplify the procedure and improve the conditions for lending to new energy projects in the territorial communities of Ukraine.
As explained in a release from the company on Thursday, the parties have created a joint program to simplify the financing and implementation of energy projects at the community level. According to the memorandum, the company will carry out economic and technical analysis of community-initiated projects that apply for funding. The company will also offer communities market-based tools to improve the economic efficiency and sustainability of such projects, including cooperation within self-production mechanisms, aggregated and balancing groups. The economic models of the projects developed by the ECU will become the basis for the financial assessment of their profitability and payback by Oschadbank when making lending decisions.
“In our experience, one of the barriers to the development of decentralized generation is the lack of relevant competence in the vast majority of small communities. Engaging the specialized expertise of ESU will allow communities to assess the potential for developing their own energy projects, which can not only ensure uninterrupted energy supply or replace it with their own generation, but also bring income to the community budget,” commented Yuriy Katzion, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Oschadbank in charge of corporate business.
He added that Oschad has deep expertise in working with energy projects of any complexity, and its market share in this market is over 31%.
According to Vitaliy Butenko, CEO of ECU, the company is constantly looking for and creating ways to strengthen the market paradigm of ensuring the security of energy supply for communities, and the combination of the deep market expertise of its team with the reliable financial platform of Oschadbank creates the conditions for achieving win-win solutions in one of the most complex but strategically important energy supply sectors.
As reported, in October 2024, CEO Vitaliy Butenko said that the company wants to occupy the niche of a state-owned distributed generation operator (DG) to help utilities and cities with its launch and operation. On December 19, EKU, SIGRE-Ukraine Association and the Association of Small Cities of Ukraine (ASCU) signed a memorandum of cooperation in the development of distributed generation in the regions.
In a blitz interview with Energoreforma in early January 2025, Butenko noted that the company is developing a special unit that will focus on comprehensive support for the development of distributed generation in the regions. According to him, the company will identify a list of joint pilot projects for implementation, which it will be able to scale up to other communities in the country.
In a blitz interview with Energoreforma at the end of February 2025, Yevhen Myachyn, Director of the Corporate Business Development and Support Department of Oschadbank, said that the bank in the corporate business segment for a month and a half of this year has already signed EUR 40 million in loan agreements for energy projects, which is almost as much as for the whole of last year – EUR 45 million, so he sees a clear trend towards an increase in the volume of financing for energy projects.
State-owned Oschadbank’s pre-tax profit for 2024 amounted to UAH 18.7 billion, compared to UAH 9.3 billion in 2023 and UAH 0.6 billion in 2022, the bank said in a press release on Thursday.
According to the report, the amount of income tax and dividends that Oschadbank will pay to the state budget based on its performance in 2024 is expected to amount to UAH 12.2 billion: UAH 9.9 billion of income tax and UAH 2.3 billion of dividends, which is UAH 5.8 billion more than in 2023.
The bank notes that such results were made possible by increasing the balance sheet currency while developing its business. This contributed to an increase in Oschad’s net interest income by UAH 5.5 billion, or 29%.
In addition, work with problem borrowers and other measures to resolve bad debts helped the bank to release provisions by UAH 2.3 billion.
According to the release, the volume of Oschadbank’s net loan portfolio in 2024 increased by UAH 22 billion, or 25%, and exceeded UAH 111 billion. This became possible due to active lending to both businesses (+UAH 15.9 billion since the beginning of the year) and individuals (+UAH 6.1 billion).
It is noted that an important area of Oschad’s investment was investments in government debt securities, the portfolio of which increased by UAH 72.8 billion (in nominal terms), or 68% since the beginning of 2024. Over the past year, the bank purchased UAH 120 billion worth of government bonds, which increased its market share from 16.3% to 20.3%, and its share in the growth of government bonds in the banking system reached 32%.
Oschadbank also clarified that it had tripled the transfer of taxes, fees and paid dividends to the state budget in 2024 to a record UAH 17.2 billion, of which UAH 10.6 billion was income tax (including UAH 2.9 billion in 2023 and UAH 7.7 billion in 2024).
According to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), as of December 1, 2024, Oschadbank ranked 2nd (UAH 439.37 billion) in terms of total assets among 61 banks in the country. The net profit of the financial institution for 11 months of last year amounted to UAH 12.86 billion.
