(Bloomberg) -- Raiffeisen Bank International AG agreed to sell its Belarusian unit in a deal that will dent its profit by about €800 million ($893 million) at closing.
The Viennese lender will sell its 88% stake in Priorbank JSC to UAE-based Soven 1 Holding Limited, with closing expected by the end of the year, it said in a statement on Friday. The bank didn’t disclose financial details of the transaction.
The deal will have an €800 million impact on consolidated profit, related to the difference between the sale price and book value of the unit, as well as the reclassification of historical currency losses, Raiffeisen said.
It will lower Raiffeisen’s CET1 ratio excluding Russia - the bank’s most closely watched capital measure used to determine dividend payments - by about 5 basis points.
The sale is part of efforts by Raiffeisen to leave the Russian and Belarusian market in the wake of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now well into its third year. Shares of its Russian unit were frozen earlier this month by a court in the Kaliningrad region.
“With the completion of this transaction, RBI will have successfully exited the Belarusian market, and thereby reduced its operational complexity in line with its de-risking strategy in Eastern Europe,” the bank said in the statement.
Raiffeisen shares were down 0.3% in Friday morning trading in Vienna, extending losses for the year to date to 3.9%. That compares with a 20% gain for the Stoxx 600 index of European banks in 2024.
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