Cartelbank Befriends Sheikh

<BR>The St Petersburg Cartelbank has become the first credit organisation in the city to use Arabian capital.<BR>The bank has acquired a major shareholder from the United Arab Emirates. Saeed General Trading owns 24.3% of shares in Cartelbank. The company is owned by Sheikh Saeed Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan. To attract a major shareholder, Cartelbank developed plans for mutually profitable co-operation. However, the deployment of the bank's plans was blocked by the Russian crisis.<BR>Cartelbank's management chairman, Igor Koptev, told DP's correspondent that the bank has been looking for a foreign investor since 1997. A partner of the bank with military export connections and who regularly participates at the Abu Dhabi weapons fair helped to land the Arab shareholder. "The UEA is a very rich country. The region is very interesting for us," said Igor Koptev. He said that a preliminary agreement was reached with Saeed General Trading, stipulating the injection of $2m into Cartelbank's charter capital. But before the foreigner could make his deposit, the crisis struck on 17 August. The Arabian partner now needed three times fewer dollars to purchase the share packet stipulated. <BR>Today, Saeed General Trading has bought only half of the shares allocated to it, for $300,000. The bank's managers are persuading the foreign partner to deposit the remaining sum before the summer, so that the bank can bring the charter capital up to 30m roubles and work on obtaining a general licence.<BR>As a bank shareholder in, Saeed General Trading expected to operate joint activity connected with financing trading operations with Russia.