Troika Dialog seeks to raise capital

Financial Times
January 28, 2009

By Catherine Belton in Moscow and Tom Burgis in Johannesburg

Troika Dialog, Russia’s second-biggest investment bank, is seeking to
raise capital, possibly through an equity sale, Ruben Vardanyan, Troika
Dialog’s main owner, said.

Mr Vardanyan declined to comment on reports in Vedomosti, the FT’s
Russian sister paper on Wednesday that Troika was in talks to sell a 30
per cent stake in itself to South Africa’s Standard Bank. But he told
the Financial Times that the bank was `looking at all possible variants’
for raising financing either through ‘long-term debt financing or by
bringing in investors’. He declined to name the sum the bank was seeking
to raise.

Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank, also declined to comment on
possible talks, saying only that it was continuously assessing
`acquisition or growth opportunities’ in Russia as an important
strategic market it has been present in for more than 10 years.

Any sale of equity in Troika Dialog would follow the hasty sale of a 50
per cent stake in Renaissance Capital, Russia’s largest investment bank,
for $500m to Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire, at the height
of Russia’s market collapse in September.

Rumours had swept the market that Troika could be forced to sell a stake
too but Mr Vardanyan had insisted he was not in talks to sell his bank.

Speaking from Davos, where Troika is to host an ice skating extravaganza
on Friday evening, Mr Vardanyan said on Wednesday that the bank was not
seeking to cover any losses as a result of Russia’s market fall.

Russian brokerages were hit hard as investors pulled money out of the
market last autumn triggering a wave of margin calls on loans backed by
shares in blue chip stocks that helped send the market tumbling down
more than 70 per cent.

Liquidity dried up amid a crisis of confidence after one Russian
brokerage, KIT Finance, failed to meet obligations on share repurchasing
deals. The government opened a 60bn rouble credit line to help restore
liquidity to brokerages.

d66-11dd-bd60-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1