The Central Bank is ready to launch the sale of a 7.6 percent stake in Sberbank, the country's biggest bank, but no decision has been taken on timing, a senior official said Wednesday.
"In theory it [the placement] could take place at any moment," the regulator's first deputy chairman, Alexei Ulyukayev, told reporters.
"We are in a high state of technical readiness," he added, declining to comment on price.
The sale of the stake, worth $5.5 billion at its current market valuation, could help the bank widen its investor base and achieve a fairer value. It would also trim the Central Bank's ownership of Sberbank, on behalf of the state, to a bare majority.
Sberbank, Europe's second-largest lender after HSBC, had planned to sell the 7.6 percent owned by the Central Bank last September but postponed the deal following a collapse in global equity markets.
(Reuters)
