Nomos Bank reports stable funding base

Russia’s Nomos Bank has reported stable growth of its funding base, which has increased by approximately 2.5%.

In an official statement, the bank states that liquidity ratios in Nomos Bank have exceeded the statutory level of over 50% during September.

Balance currency in the bank has increased by 4% in September, and the credit portfolio (excluding interbank loans) grew by 7.5%, reaching approximately US$7.12bn.

The daily volume of the bank’s liquid assets throughout September was above US$1.45bn even during the peak days of the crisis situation in the global and Russian markets.

Over the past eight months, the bank has also acquired 35.1 tons of gold, including purchases from gold mining companies. It has bought 118.6 tons of silver during the same period.

“Precious metals production season ends in October-November, so we expect to increase these figures before the end of the year”, adds Andrey Shirokov, vice-president of Nomos Bank.

The bulk of the precious metals was sold into the Russian domestic market, with the remainder exported. To date in 2008, the total amount of gold sold by the bank exceeded US$1bn.

The bank also regularly raises funds in the syndicated debt markets, and has redeemed the second tranche of a two-tranche syndicated facility for the amount of US$93.25mn. This was the final tranche due to be repaid from its dual-tranche loan closed in March 2007. The two portions of the deal carried tenors of 12 and 18 months respectively. It was raised to finance gold mining industry enterprises. Mandated lead arrangers on the deal were RZB, Raiffeisenbank Austria (a subsidiary of RZB), Standard Bank, and Société Générale.

The bank is planning on returning to the syndicated loan market in October, looking to raise US$100mn to finance export and import operations of the bank’s clients.

Nomos was last in the syndications market in May, raising a US$135mn facility via mandated lead arrangers RZB and Standard Bank. It was originally launched at US$80mn, and oversubscribed. It paid a margin of 1.55% over Libor per year. Since 2001, Nomos Bank has raised 14 syndicated loans for a total of US$1bn.

Nomos Bank is one of the largest commercial operators in the Russian market for precious metals purchasing and selling.