OREANDA-NEWS. March 19, 2009. Sberbank will stay in the black in 2009, whatever the case may be. The bank’s profit will decline y-o-y but will top tens of billions rubles, the bank’s chairman German Gref said. “We see that even if the situation unfolds under the best-case scenario, (net profit) will be much lower than the 2008 figure”, Gref said.

“The bank has no scenarios whereby the 2009 performance is stronger y-o-y. However, even if the situation unfolds under the worst-case scenario, profit will amount to tens of billions of rubles and more”, he said.

According to Gref, the bank is allocating almost all net profit to reserves against possible losses under bad loans. “In the first half of the year, reserves will grow fast and we earmark nearly all profit to reserves”, Gref said and added that at present the bank’s real losses from non-performing loans are 2.5-3x lower than its reserves.