Russian Economy News: VTB writes off debts

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

VTB writes off debts – BBC

The quality of the borrowers continues to deteriorate, according to the Russian VTB. This applies to both the retail and corporate loan portfolio. In the first half of the year, VTB has written off nearly 27 billion rubles. “Bad” debt. In the second half of the year this trend will continue, although the volume of write-downs may be reduced.

On Tuesday, VTB said half-yearly statements in accordance with IFRS. According to the deputy chairman of the Bank Herbert Moos, in the second half of 2015, VTB expects to increase lending activity. And if the growth of the retail portfolio will be close to zero, in the corporate segment, VTB hopes to reach a level of 10% growth, which corresponds to the market trend, due to a decrease in interest rates.

At the same time improving the quality of the loan portfolio does not happen and is not expected.

«There will be a deterioration in the quality of borrowers in certain areas of the economy – said Moos – but we will improve the quality of our work with borrowers and expect to decrease the risk level of about 3% ».

In the second quarter the volume of bad loans rose to 7%. The Bank continues to build reserves for possible loan losses, but the pace of this index slowed down in the second quarter was established reserves in the amount of 31 billion rubles., While in the first volume of the 48.9 billion rubles.

As the Senior Vice President of VTB Dmitry drunk as a percentage of the volume of reserves for corporate and retail loans tend to parity – 44 billion rubles. under the “physicists” and 35.9 billion rubles. for legal entities. The biggest concern is the debt of companies operating in the sector of transport engineering, infrastructure construction – in other words, those areas of the economy that traditionally require large investments, said drunk.

For the first six months of the year the bank has written off on the NPL (overdue loans) of about 26.6 billion rubles .: 23 bln. in the corporate portfolio and about 4 billion in retail. In the second half of the year, according to Mohs, expected write-offs amounting to more than 10 billion rubles.

The total amount written off assets for “bad” loans in the first half of 2015 were not included writing off the loan the mining company ” Mechel “experiencing significant financial difficulties. Recall that in March 2015, VTB has filed a lawsuit to recover from the company’s 50.182 billion rubles.

However, the bank does not consider the loan “Mechel” irrevocable and has no plans to write-downs on it and in the second half.

«We write off only those loans that have been created under the 100 percent reserves, and only when taken all possible measures to get them back. This does not in any way for the “Mechel”, – said Dmitry Pianoff.

The top managers of the bank declined to comment in detail on the situation with the debt “Mechel”, but noted that the agreement between the lender and the borrower It has not yet been achieved. A source at the most mining company told “Gazeta.ru” that the negotiations on the restructuring of this debt is in the final stages and very soon the results will be announced.

According to a report presented Tuesday VTB IFRS for the second quarter 2015 the bank received 1.2 billion rubles. net profit. This is almost four times less than the same period in 2014 (4.6 billion rubles.). At the end of six months the group appeared in the negative, showing a loss of 17.1 billion rubles. During the same period last year, the group received 5 billion rubles. arrived.