The sale of Raiffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) direct bank ZUNO BANK AG to the Alfa Banking Group, as announced by RBI in September 2015, will not be concluded.
ABH Holdings S.A., the Luxembourg-based parent company of the Alfa Banking Group, with which RBI had reached an agreement last year, withdrew from the contract of sale. The reason for the withdrawal was unrelated to the entity for sale.
The effect of the transaction on regulatory capital ratios would have been negligible. The reasoning for selling Zuno was to reduce complexity and minimize overlap within the group.
As RBI press-office informed Roomian.org, RBI is examining the next steps which could be either external or internal, e.g. full sale of Zuno, full integration of Zuno into other RBI group entities, or partial sale.
As at 31 December 2015, Zuno had about 200 employees and continues to build on its solid customer base of around 255,000 customers in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. The bank manages total deposits in the amount of approx. EUR 775 million and an increasing customer loan portfolio of approx. EUR 75 million.
The bank improves its results continuously from 2010 up to now. It is caused by rising sale of loan products. ZUNO currently belongs to the top the chart among Slovak and Czech banks in the perspective of offered interest rates for refinancing. The interest rates for loans refinancing start from 6,9 % p.a.
“This will have no impact on the clients in the Czech Republic and Slovakia where ZUNO will continue to offer its services and products. ZUNO remains a stand-alone and fully regulated Austrian bank with headquarters in Vienna,” Oyvind Oanes, Chief Executive Officer in ZUNO, says in press-release issued by the bank.
The contract of sale was signed in September 2015, until now it was still a subject to approval by the financial authorities.
