Blackstone Group Inc. the world’s largest alternative investment management company, recorded strong net income growth in the third quarter of 2023 and an increase in assets under management.
According to a company press release, net income for the July-September period totaled $552 million, or 73 cents per share, compared with $2.3 million, or less than 1 cent per share, for the same period a year earlier.
Meanwhile, distributable earnings fell to $1.2 billion from $1.4 billion.
Revenue jumped to $2.54 billion from $1.06 billion.
The volume of assets under management of Blackstone at the end of the third quarter amounted to $1.01 trillion, up 6% over the year.
The company will pay a dividend of 80 cents per share at the end of the third quarter.
Blackstone’s stock price is down 5.8% in Thursday trading. Since the beginning of this year, the company’s capitalization has increased by almost 30% to $124.3 billion.
The Verkhovna Rada on Friday adopted in the first reading the finalized bill (#9656d) on temporary doubling – up to 36% in 2024-2025. – rate of tax on profits of banks.
According to the first deputy head of the relevant committee, a member of the faction “Golos” Yaroslav Zheleznyak, 247 people’s deputies voted in favor with the required minimum of 226 votes.
He specified that the bill also prohibits for this period the crediting of profits against the losses of previous periods.
“In the budget of 2024, the adoption of this law is laid down as +9.9 billion UAH”, – reminded Zheleznyak.
According to the National Bank, the net profit of 64 operating Ukrainian banks for the first eight months of this year amounted to 95.1 billion UAH, profit tax – 17.0 billion UAH, including PrivatBank – 39.2 billion UAH and 9.0 billion UAH, and four other state banks – 20.6 billion UAH and 0.4 billion UAH.
In 2022, Kremenchuk Steel Plant JSC (Kremenchuk, Poltava region), part of the industrial assets of TAS Group, posted a net profit of UAH 50.281 million, while it ended 2021 with a net loss of UAH 56.833 million.
According to the agenda of the company’s general meeting of shareholders published in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) on November 13, the company’s uncovered loss as of January 1, 2023 amounted to UAH 56.886 million.
The shareholders intend to amend the charter, review the reports of the supervisory board for 2021 and 2022, consider the conclusions of the audit reports, approve the results of the company’s financial and economic activities for these years, determine the procedure for distributing profits (compensation for losses), approve annual reports, hold elections of the supervisory board, and consider other issues.
As reported, Kremenchuk Steel posted a net loss of UAH 22.81 million in 2020.
Kremenchuk Steel is a leading Ukrainian foundry producing steel castings for freight cars and heavy trucks.
According to the second quarter of 2023, Defano Investments Ltd (Cyprus) owns 48.4421% of the shares of PJSC “KSP”, FinEuroVector Financial Company LLC – 18.8392%, Alfa Cross Financial Company – 24.9%, Alta Finance LLC – 5.7276%.
TAS Group was founded in 1998. Its business interests include the financial sector (banking and insurance segments), industry, real estate, agriculture, and venture capital projects. The founder and major shareholder of the group is Sergey Tigipko.
State-owned Oschadbank quadrupled its net profit in January-August this year compared to the same period in 2022 – from UAH 2.3 billion to more than UAH 9.4 billion, including a net profit of UAH 1.2 billion in August.
“The final financial result was also affected by the revaluation of financial instruments in the securities portfolio: it added about UAH 1.5 billion to the total profit,” the press service of the financial institution told Interfax-Ukraine on Monday.
The state-owned bank notes an improvement in all key financial indicators. In particular, its net interest income increased by 39% to UAH 12.1 billion compared to the figures for 8 months of 2022, and net commission income by 30% to UAH 4.4 billion.
Operating profit amounted to UAH 7.8 billion, which is more than twice as much as in the same period last year.
In addition, as noted in the press service, Oschad has sufficient liquidity and capital at its disposal.
According to the information provided, the regulatory capital adequacy ratio of the financial institution as of September 1 this year amounted to 18.48%, while the established standard of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) is 10%.
At the same time, the bank has so far refrained from forecasting its financial results for this year.
According to the NBU, as of July 1, 2023, Oschadbank ranked 2nd in terms of assets (UAH 324.74 billion) among 64 banks operating in the country, and first in terms of the number of branches in the country (1183).
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) proposes to raise the corporate income tax rate from 18% to 38% in 2023-2024, NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyi said.
“Our forecast is that additional budget revenues if the current rate is raised to 38% will total more than UAH 20 billion this year and next year,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to him, such a tax design will have a limited impact on macrofinancial stability and at the same time support Ukraine’s defense capabilities.
The NBU governor, citing the monitoring of the financial condition and the results of the assessment of the banks’ stability, believes that financial institutions are quite capable of making additional payments in the current environment. According to the regulator, the tax rate increase will have a limited impact on lending and deposit rates, given the banks’ sufficient margins.
As reported, the National Bank considers additional taxation of banks to be a justified temporary step in view of the war, seeing financial and legal grounds for this, but proposes to increase the tax rate on banks’ profits instead of taxing net interest income as proposed by MPs.
According to Pyshnyi, this is the version the NBU will discuss with the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy in the near future.
He also said that the market participants with whom the central bank communicated were sympathetic to this position.
According to the NBU, the net profit of 64 operating Ukrainian banks in the first seven months of this year amounted to UAH 83.2 billion, while the income tax was UAH 14.4 billion, including UAH 34.4 billion and UAH 7.9 billion for PrivatBank, and UAH 18.8 billion and UAH 0.1 billion for four other state-owned banks.
In late August, MPs submitted to the Rada a bill to tax banks’ net interest income at a rate of 5% in 2024-2026 (in addition to corporate income tax), which could bring in about UAH 10 billion to the state budget next year, according to their estimates. In the first half of 2023, banks’ interest income reached UAH 141 billion, including UAH 73.5 billion from transactions with government securities, and net interest income for the same period amounted to UAH 93.6 billion, up 75% compared to the pre-war period of 2021.
PJSC “Ukrnaftoburnia” (“UNB”) according to the results of work in the first half of 2023 received a profit of 700 million UAH, said the director of PJSC “Ukrnafta”, to which the company is transferred in management, Sergiy Koretskyy.
“In the first half of 2023, the company received 700 million UAH of profit. There are reasons to believe that according to the results of the second half of the year “UNB” will be able to earn almost three times more. We state the fact of a significant increase in realization prices,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
“As stipulated by the concluded contracts with ARMA, 90% of net profit will be transferred in favor of the state,” Koretskyi specified.
According to him, the company also managed to eliminate technological deficiencies and launch the 88th well.
“After the drilling was completed, we received a flow of high-pressure formation water from the upper horizons. We carried out repair and water isolation works. Consequently, we increased production by 170 thousand cubic meters of gas and 30 tons of condensate per day,” he said.
In addition, “UNB” plans to soon complete commissioning of the booster compressor station, which will slow down the natural decline in production.
As reported, after the arrest and court decision to transfer to the management of ARMA “Ukrnaftoburnia”, LLC “Sakhalinskoye”, LLC “Sirius-1”, LLC “East Europe Petroleum” in the case on the legality of subsoil use of the Sakhalin field, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine by the order №454-r of May 23, 2023 supported the proposal to transfer to the management of “Ukrnafta” corporate rights in these companies.
At the end of June, the AMCU authorized Ukrnafta to receive shares in the authorized capitals of these companies for management. On July 7, the acts of acceptance and transfer of assets were signed.
“Ukrnafta is one of the largest private gas production companies in Ukraine. Since 2010, it has been developing the Sakhalin oil and gas condensate field (Krasnokutsk district, Kharkiv region) with reserves of 15 billion cubic meters of gas. The company’s gross production in 2020 will amount to 725.4 million cubic meters of gas and 80.8 thousand tons of oil and condensate, in 2021 – 691.3 million cubic meters and 76.6 thousand tons.
For the Sakhalin field as a whole, gas production in 2020 amounted to 844.3 million cubic meters and 86 thousand tons of oil and condensate, in 2021 – 789.5 million cubic meters and 80.8 thousand tons.
