YEREVAN. - Equity investment in Ameriabank is to become a transformational one for the Armenian banking sector, Mr Nick Tesseyman, the managing director for financial institutions at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said today in Yerevan at the ceremony of signing two financial agreements with Ameriabank CJSC (one with the EBRD, and the other with the IFC).
According to him, every attempt with Ameriabank has been successful, be it SME finance, energy efficiency or trade finance.
“Each time we told our colleagues: “Are you sure that you can actually deliver?”, and each time we’ve been extremely impressed by the results,” the managing director said.
“This, however, is the biggest challenge so far. There’s enormous job ahead, to maintain the quality of Ameriabank’s services, and to transform the Armenian banking sector”, he added.
Pursuant to the agreement, the EBRD will appoint a nominee to the board of Ameriabank, to help install best practices of corporate governance. This is a central part of the plan of taking the bank to the public market, Mr Tesseyman said.
However, improvements are only due for the corporate governance model. As far as lending policy is concerned, no changes need to be done.
“We simply would like the bank to continue working as well as it did in the past”, he said.
According to one of the agreements, the EBRD will invest $40 mln in Ameriabank, of which $30 for approximately 20% stock, and the remaining 10 mln will later be invested for future capital increases.
Another agreement is a subordinated loan of $50 mln to Ameriabank from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank.
Ameriabank is the largest bank in Armenia by assets, loan and deposit portfolio, and liabilities. Bank’s total capital is close to $200 mln, the total assets amounting to $1 bln.
