TAS-Commercebank Plans Sale by Tender.

Sergey Tyhypko, chairman and presumed main owner of TAS-Commercebank, which ranks 21st among Ukrainian banks by assets, announced yesterday that a 51% stake in the bank would be sold by tender. He said at least three foreign banks would take part. Alexander Viktorov: The tender comes after Hungary’s OTP, one of the bank’s expected to take part in the tender, balked at Tyhypko’s initial asking price. We think the stake could sell for a P/B ratio of 3.5-4.0. Based on the bank’s equity of $151m at the end of June (counting TAS-Commercebank’s recent merger with TAS-Investbank and their recent share capital increases), that would translate into a price of $270-300m.