Published: August 14, 2012
Bank's president believes Fitch outlook shift doesn't reflect the facts.
The president of Nomos Bank, a London-listed Russian institution, has spoken out against an outlook downgrade from rating agency Fitch.
The agency has kept the bank’s long-term issuer default rating at BB but has revised its outlook to negative from stable following the news that three Russian shareholders, including Otkritie Financial Corporation, have taken a 26.5% stake in Nomos from Czech-owned private equity group PPF.
Fitch says the change in outlook reflects potentially negative implications of PPF’s exit for Nomos’s corporate governance and risk appetite – PPF’s presence “helped to improve the former and temper the latter”, its analysts say.
The agency also says that its analysts believe closer business integration between Nomos and Otkritie Financial Corporation has become more likely, adding that Otkritie has a weaker credit profile.
In a statement, Nomos’s group president, Dmitry Sokolov, said: “In our opinion, the bank’s creditworthiness has been steadily increasing. We adhere strictly to the highest Russian and international standards of corporate governance, and intend to continue to do so in a manner befitting a public company.
Sokolov added that the same applies to the bank’s risk management policy. “The bank’s risk profile is entirely controlled by the supervisory board, through appropriate committees headed by independent non-executive directors,” he said. “Furthermore, given the bank’s high level of capitalisation and successful economic performance, we feel the company has a positive outlook in the current environment.”