Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash has signed a preliminary agreement to buy 86.7 percent of the shares in Nadra Bank, the seventh largest in the ex-Soviet state, the daily Ekonomicheskiye Izvestiya said on Wednesday, Reuters reported.
The daily, quoting a source in the banking system, said the shares to be sold belonged to bank president Igor Gilenko and two members of the supervisory board, Sergei Lagur and Vadym Piatov.
Privately-owned Nadra Bank was unable to confirm or deny the report.
The bank`s site said Gilenko owned 33.4 percent of shares, with Lagur and Piatov holding 33.7 percent and 19.6 percent. A further 7.8 percent belongs to investment funds and 5.1 percent to employees.
Ukraine`s central bank on Wednesday said strategic investors had acquired 68 percent of the shares in troubled Prominvestbank, the country`s sixth largest.
Nadra is due in early November to repay a syndicated loan of $130 million contracted at LIBOR +1.5 percent and overseen by BayernLB and Fortis Bank as well as maiden $100 million in Eurobonds issued with the help of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and UBS Investment Bank.
Last month, Nadra received from the central bank a loan of 1.5 billion hryvnias ($257 million) to help repay the syndicated loan. The bank had originally intended to refinance the payment through new borrowing on the international market.
