Nomos Bank increased its assets more than expected last year to become the country's second-largest private bank, according to information in a ranking released Tuesday.
Controlled by billionaire Alexander Nesis and co-owned by Czech billionaire Petr Kellner, the bank dislodged
Promsvyazbank from second place, according to a report by Interfax Center for Economic Research.
Nomos may sell shares to the public this year to meet the growing domestic demand for financing, Nesis said in an interview that was published in December.
Nomos completed the acquisition of a controlling stake in smaller rival Bank of Khanty-Mansiysk in December, but Interfax listed the banks separately in its ranking, which was based on Russian accounting standards. Nomos combined the value of the banks' assets and announced Tuesday that they reached 519.6 billion rubles ($17.7 billion) &mdash second only to Alfa Bank among private lenders.
Nomos expected to have 450 billion rubles of assets by the end of last year, after completing Bank of Khanty-Mansiysk, Nesis said in the interview. That asset value was expected to make it the third-largest private bank &mdash up from sixth place, which it occupied prior to the acquisition.
While Khanty-Mansiysk assets remained largely unchanged in the previous quarter, Nomos itself had an "influx" of money from clients, said Nomos spokesman Alexander Dmitriyev. The lender also issued more loans than it had predicted, he said.
Moody's analyst Semyon Isakov said Nomos attracted substantial corporate deposits in last year's fourth quarter. The total size of consolidated assets may change when calculated under international standards, he said.
State-controlled Sberbank holds the most assets of all banks in the country: 8.5 trillion rubles ($289.5 billion), the Interfax research said.
