THE MOSCOW Times, a daily Russian English language newspaper, has taken a closer look into the Russian names due to compete for a place on the Bank of Cyprus’ (BoC) board of directors.
The Bank of Cyprus published the names of 49 nominees including seven Russian nationals earlier this week.
The Russian nominees “are among the customers most affected by the financial crisis that devastated the Cypriot banking system earlier this year,” the Moscow Times said referring to a €10 billion bailout deal in March which forced Cyprus to shut down its second largest bank and force major losses on the big depositors of its biggest lender.
The BoC is due to hold an annual general meeting (AGM) this Tuesday.
The Moscow Times said Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy, nominated by Bolestone Trading Ltd was “the most familiar name among Russian nominees”. A former Norilsk Nickel CEO and former KGB colleague of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Strzhalkovskiy “may still have about $10 million [about €7.6 million euro] in the bank,” the Moscow Times said.
Anjelica Anshakova and Dmitry Chichikashvili have been nominated by Scordis, Papapetrou & Co. Erishkan Kurazov and Anton Smetanin have been nominated by Christodoulos Vassiliades & Co. Both nominators offer an array of corporate and commercial legal services and have offices in Moscow.
The two other Russian nominees are the Deutsche Bank’s vice chairman for Eastern Europe Igor Lojevsky nominated by George Tsielepis, and Vladimir Sidorov, who has been nominated by MCRS Ltd and who works as a deputy director of department for Vnesheconombank, a Russian state company.
Under a decision in March to bail in Cyprus’ two largest lenders, BoC and Laiki bank, losses were imposed on large savers in both banks. Laiki is being resolved, with all of its liabilities and some of its assets folded into BoC. The BoC has been recapitalised by seizing large savers’ cash via a deposit-for-equity swap. The BoC’s creditors now form the new shareholder base, at the expense of the old shareholders whose stake has been reduced to less than 1.0 per cent the BoC’s share capital.
Laiki has been allocated about 18 per cent share capital with those shares to be sold some time in the future, with the money going to the former Laiki’s uninsured depositors. The former Laiki has become BoC’s biggest shareholder, and is the only shareholder with more than 5.0 per cent share capital in the BoC. But Russian and Ukrainian depositors represented by various Cypriot law firms collectively hold about 12 per cent.
Trying to counter the 18 per cent held by the so-called legacy Laiki creditors and the 12 per cent by Russians and Ukrainian, Archbishop Chrysostomos has also moved in to convince thousands of small BoC shareholders to give the Archbishopric a proxy to represent them in the AGM.
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