By Xinhua
Moscow : France’s Societe Generale said it was about to complete Monday a deal to gain a controlling stake in a leading Russian bank, the president of the bank’s Russian subsidiary said Monday.
“The purchase of Rosbank will most likely proceed according to schedule, and 30 percent of shares will be transferred to Societe Generale, Mark-Emmanuel Vives, president of Societe Generale Vostok, said.
“We already own 20 percent of Rosbank’s shares and we will, in this way, possess 50 percent plus one share in mid-February,” he said.
The French bank will acquire the share package for $1.7 billion.
Rosbank, one of Russia’s top thirty banks, belongs to Russian metals tycoons Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov.
Societe Generale, France’s second largest bank in terms of market capitalization, found itself at the centre of a fraud in late January, which the bank says cost it 4.9 billion euros ($7 billion) that has no parallel in global banking history.