At the end of May, the Sberbank liquidator launched a tender for Sberbank’s assets. The liquidator contacted all banks in the Czech market with the goal to evaluate the bids in early July. Reportedly (although no official confirmation has been made), three bidders showed serious interest: a preliminary bid of PPF and its Air Bank was to be CZK 52.5 billion, whereas the indicative offer of Česká spořitelna was slightly lower. ČSOB was reportedly only interested in the mortgage portfolio and indicated a bid of CZK 30 billion.

On Monday, the liquidator confirmed that the existing bidders withdrew from the tender after analysing the assets. No one submitted a binding offer by the given deadline.

According to the liquidator, there is no point in repeating the tender. Originally, the liquidator preferred to sell the assets as a whole to one bank, which would be simpler than splitting the assets among different bidders. However, such a sale is subject to an important limitation: the sale must raise enough funds to cover all the liabilities of Sberbank.  It seems that this will be hardly possible. Having said that, conversion of the liquidation into insolvency proceedings seems to be rather likely. We will keep you posted…

Martin Holler
+420 221 411 511
holler@giese.cz

Mgr. Radek Werich
+420 221 411 511
werich@giese.cz