Azerbaijan, Baku, April 26 / Trend, A. Akhundov /
The growing financial indices of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) increases its privatization price, IBA chairman of the board Jahangir Hajiyev told media today.
"The process of IBA privatization consists of four stages," he said. "At preset, the State Property Committee is analyzing the results of the first phase. One must not be in a hurry with this issue. It is unacceptable to privatize for the sake of privatization. The last financial results of the bank are very good and they continue to improve. As a result, this increases the value of the bank, including the cost of a state package, put for sale."
He said that the applications will be received from organizations wishing to participate in the privatization of the bank as customers in the fourth stage of the process.
The IBA's authorized capital is 340 million manat. IBA assets increased by 19.1 percent during the year. As of April 1, 2013, they reached 6.227 billion manat. As of the end of the first quarter of 2013, ROA (return on assets) hit 0.2 percent, ROE (return on equity) - 2.16 percent (compared to 0.14 percent) and 1.77 percent as of April 1, 2012, respectively.
The IBA was established in 1992 as the successor of the Azerbaijan branch of Vnesheconombank.
The IBA has a dominant position in the banking sector. The main shareholder of the bank is the Azerbaijani government which possesses 50.2 percent of the company, while 49.8 percent belong to private legal and physical entities.
Consulting services in preparation for the privatization of the IBA were implemented by a consortium consisting of Price Waterhouse Cooper's Audit Azerbaijan (PwC) LLC and the law firm Salans UK.
The consultant completed work on the first preparatory stage of the project of privatization for state share in the capital of IBA at the end of last year.
The second phase of the project involves the preparation of the necessary documentation for the privatization of the bank and the final determination of the list of potential buyers. The final stage was to be the process of registration of sale of shares of privatized shares.
The official exchange rate is 0.7846 AZN/USD on April 26.