Vadim Novinsky’s Smart Holding and Tomas Fiala’s Dragon Capital investment group have signed a sale and purchase agreement for Unex Bank, Smart Holding said on Thursday.
“The parties plan to close the deal during the first quarter of 2021. At the moment, the documents are being approved by the NBU. The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine has already approved the deal,” the release says.
The parties to the agreement are: – Withine Investments LTD (Cyprus) from Smart Holding, Dragon Capital Investments Limited (Cyprus) from Dragon Capital, participating in the transaction together with Ivan Svitek.
The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
According to the NBU, as of October 1, 2020, in terms of total assets, Unex Bank ranked 64th (UAH 796.83 million) among 74 banks operating in the country.
The bank completed nine months of 2020 with a net loss of UAH 22.97 million, which is 3.8 times higher than the loss for the same period last year, including in the third quarter the net loss amounted to UAH 14.67 million against UAH 1.41 million in third quarter of last year.
Bank’s net interest income for nine months of this year decreased by 14.8% – to UAH 68.07 million, and the net commission income – by 21.2%, to UAH 19.3 million.
The release states that Withine Investments LTD (Cyprus) owns 100% of the shares of Unex Bank, and 100% of the shares of Withine Investments, in turn, belong to Smart Investments (CY) Ltd, owned by MP Novinsky.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) has permitted the Dragon Capital investment company to acquire over 50% of the shares of Treeum Holdings Limited, the owner of the Finance.ua and Minfin.com.ua publications, as well as Finline, Bank Online and Multi.ua.
“Permission is granted to Dragon Capital Investments Limited (Nicosia, Cyprus) to acquire shares of Treeum Holdings Limited (Larnaca, Cyprus), which grants that 50% of the votes in the company’s management body are exceeded,” the committee said on its website on Monday.
According to the information on the holding’s website, Treeum is a Ukrainian online platform that compares and sells financial products, supports an online currency exchange platform, reliable ratings and statistics, as well as news, comments and professional analytics.
The revenue of Finance.ua in 2019 amounted to about UAH 17.8 million, net profit – about UAH 0.5 million, that of Minfinmedia – UAH 36.9 million and almost UAH 1 million, respectively, Banking Class – UAH 10.9 million and UAH 0.1 million.
Multi.ua and Finline last year saw revenues of UAH 6.6 million and UAH 1.3 million, respectively, and a net loss of UAH 0.7 million and UAH 2.3 million.
According to the public register, Ksenia Vaisman, a Russian citizen living near Kyiv, is indicated as the beneficiary of Treeum Holdings Limited.
This year, USAID Financial Sector Transformation Project (FST) financed the launch of the LIGA.Money platform by LigaBusinessInform Investment Agency. According to the agency, NV and Finclub also participated in the competition, while the companies of Treeum Holdings were not admitted to it.
Dragon Capital is one of the largest investment companies in Ukraine. It works in the field of direct investment and financial services, provides a full range of investment banking and brokerage services to corporate and private clients. The ultimate beneficiary of Dragon Capital in the public register is a Czech citizen, President of the European Business Association Tomas Fiala.
Fiala is the owner of the NV media holding, which includes the eponymous magazine, portal and radio.
Dragon Capital investment company has developed a concept for the E40 Industrial Park with an area of 200,000 square meters on the 27th kilometer of the Zhytomyr highway (Kolonschyna village, Kyiv region), plans to start the construction of the first stage in 2021.
“According to the developed concept, the total area of the buildings of the industrial park will be 200,000 square meters, including class A production and storage facilities, cross-docking terminals, office, utility and infrastructure facilities (a hotel, a truck service station, etc.),” it said in a press release.
According to the report, the project will be located on a front land plot with an area of 49 hectares.
“Thanks to the support of Makariv Regional State Administration, as well as the Regional Development Agency of Kyiv region, Dragon Capital managed to develop and approve a detailed plan of the territory as quickly as possible. This will allow the company to proceed to the next step in the implementation of the project – the development of project documentation. Our company plans to start building the first stage of the E40 Industrial Park in 2021,” the report says.
As reported, Dragon Capital acquired the relevant plots in 2018 from Europolis GmbH, which is part of the large real estate concern CA Immo Group (Vienna, Austria).
Dragon Capital is one of the largest groups of companies in Ukraine that operates in the field of investment and financial services and provides a full range of investment banking and brokerage services, direct investments, asset management for institutional, corporate and private clients.
BUILDING, DRAGON CAPITAL, INDUSTRIAL PARK, INVESTMENT COMPANY, KYIV
Real growth of Ukraine’s GDP in 2020 would accelerate to 4% from 3.2-3.3% in 2019 with a flight rise in inflation from 4.1% to 5.2%, Dragon Capital Investment Company (Kyiv) has said. “Now the situation is very good in Ukraine, one of the best for 20 years of our stay here,” Tomas Fiala, the head and founder of the company, said at the presentation of the macroeconomic forecast of the European Business Association (EBA) in Kyiv.
According to him, in 2021, the company expects a slight slowdown, to 3.7% with inflation of 6.1%.
Fiala said that Dragon Capital predicts that the hryvnia will strengthen this year on average to UAH 24/$1 compared to UAH 25.80/$1 last year.
He added that, according to the company’s expectations, the exchange rate at the end of this year will be about UAH 24/$1, and at the end of the next – UAH 25.5/$1.
According to Fiala, such an economic growth with the hryvnia strengthening has already increased its U.S. dollar-pegged GDP from $90 billion in 2015 to $150 billion in 2019 and, tentatively, to $175 billion this year.
He said that this allowed reducing public debt from 80% of GDP to 51% of GDP and allows us to expect an increase in the credit rating of Ukraine by another 1-2 points in 2020.
The head of Dragon Capital said that among the main risks for the forecast is the refusal to cooperate with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is extremely dangerous in the conditions of Ukraine’s dependence on external financing and the deterioration of the global situation, especially in the grain and metal markets.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMC) has allowed the Cyprus company Dragon Capital Investments Limited to acquire a controlling stake in Idea Bank (Lviv) in the amount of 193,318 shares, which is 64.7106% of the total number of shares of the bank, the press service of the AMC has told Interfax-Ukraine.
As reported, Poland’s Getin Holding S.A. on December 20, 2019 signed an agreement on the sale of 100% of the shares of Ukraine’s Idea Bank and 100% of New Finance Service LLC (Kyiv) to a group consisting of Dragon Capital Investments Limited (Cyprus), Dragon Capital New Ukraine Fund L.P. and an individual.
According to a report by Getin Holding on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, the purchase price in euros is equivalent to UAH 1.368 billion, or PLN224.76 million, excluding the amount of dividends before closing the transaction and the price of 100% participation in New Finance Service of about UAH 5 million. The price can also be reduced as a result of negotiations between the parties after an independent auditor prepares a report, the document says.
According to him, it is expected that the transaction could be completed before May 31, 2020.
Getin Holding in October 2019 put Idea Bank up for sale. On October 22 it announced the signing of a letter of intent with the Direct Investment Fund.
Idea Bank (formerly Plus Bank) was founded in 1989.
Idea Bank ranked 24th out of 76 operating banks as of October 1, 2019 in terms of total assets (UAH 7.510 billion), according to the National Bank of Ukraine.
Cypriot Dragon Capital Investments Limited is going to acquire shares of Arricano Real Estate Plc developer’s Cypriot subsidies: Museo Holdings Limited and Sunloop Co limited, which would grant over 50% of the votes in the management body of the companies. According to an agenda of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU), the regulator will consider the issue of granting permission for the transaction at a meeting on September 12.
As reported, Arricano Real Estate Plc (Cyprus), managing company and developer of shopping and entertainment malls in Ukraine, is going to sell two its properties: Sun Gallery Mall in Kryvyi Rih (Dnipropetrovsk region) and City Mall in Zaporizhia.
According to the developer, Sun Gallery is currently held in Arricano’s subsidiary, PrJSC Ukrpangroup, a Ukrainian subsidiary of Museo Holdings Limited and City Mall is currently held in in Arricano’s subsidiary, Pryzma Alfa LLC, aUkrainian subsidiary of Sunloop Co Limited.
Arricano is one of the leading real estate developers of shopping centers in Ukraine with European investments. It is listed on the AIM Market of the London Stock Exchange since 2013. Today Arricano Group owns and operates five completed shopping centers and 49,9% shareholding in Sky Mall and land for further three sites currently under development.
