By Mauro Orru
Raiffeisen Bank International plans to buy a stake in Austrian construction company Strabag for 1.51 billion euros ($1.65 billion) in cash from Russia-based Rasperia Trading Ltd., in a deal that will require approval from Russian authorities.
The Austrian bank said Tuesday that it would buy a 27.78% stake from Rasperia Trading through its Russian subsidiary AO Raiffeisenbank as a first step, and then transfer it to the group by issuing a dividend in kind.
“RBI will continue to work on the deconsolidation of AO Raiffeisenbank by way of a sale or as a fall-back a spin-off,” the group said in a statement.
Unlike countless Western companies, Raiffeisen opted to maintain operations in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Raiffeisen entered the Russian market in 1996 and didn’t shrink its business after the Crimea annexation in 2014. It has long been one of the European banks with the largest exposure to Russia, with more than 9,500 employees there at the end of 2022, according to the bank’s annual report.
Raiffeisen expects the stake acquisition and the distribution of the dividend in kind to close in the first quarter of 2024, though the bank will need approval from Russian authorities for the dividend.
Raiffeisen said its capital-buffer ratio, known as core equity tier 1, or CET1, should take a hit of roughly 10 basis points at closing.
Write to Mauro Orru at [email protected]
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