OREANDA-NEWS. On 09 February 2009 was announced, that among the detailed statistics presented by the NBU Millennium Capital concentrates on the group of the largest commercial banks. In particular, the group of largest will include 18 of the commercial banks, increased by Swedbank and Ukrgasbank due to the amount of both their assets and the regulative capital. Meanwhile the Kreditprombank was replaced from this group. In 4Q2008 the amount of loan reserves almost doubled (up 93%) to UAH 31.8bn, which shows that the significant amount of loans were denominated in foreign currency. Despite the fact that this may look as significant deterioration of the banks assets' quality, Millennium Capital considers that top 18 banks rather tried to correspond to tightened NBU requirements related to sharp hryvnia devaluation. This led to large losses of this group of banks. In particular, despite around 1.5 time growth of the banks' interest income, their net income grew only 5%. Top 18 banks increased their equity capital by 40% to UAH 75.0bn in 4Q2009. Millennium Capital relates this to a significant growth of the banks charter funds (up 54% in 4Q2008), which was one of the most easily available sources of additional funds. The most significant change in the banks liabilities was the increase of the other banks funds (up 73% to UAH 230.8), explained by both NBU's refinancing and insignificant support by the parent foreign banks. According to our estimate the regulative capital standard of these banks improved from around 13% as of 1 October 2008 to around 17% as of 1 January 2009.

Overall, Millennium Capital sees the top-18 banks to be the most reliable banks in the current economic situation, though each of them needs a specific consideration when making an investment decision. The same view was supported by the Stress test conducted by prominent auditing companies on these banks, which still required their additional capitalization of UAH 24.7bn.

Millennium Capital is an integrated financial services provider. Established in 2000 by a group of professionals with solid background in securities and corporate finance, Millennium Capital is now one of the major investment banking institutions.