Bank history

At a time of growing competition, when the size of a bank determines its possibilities and presents a clear competitive advantage, the successful development of Russian banks requires serious efforts to increase the scale of business. Growth of a bank due to its own resources has significant advantages; however, this approach is limited. For four Russian banks—INVESTBANK, Conversbank, Grankombank and Voronezhprombank—the optimal solution in this instance was to reorganize and merge under the name Investbank.

All four banks in the merged INVESTBANK were recognized economic and financial leaders in their respective geographic regions, and the result of their merger increased their strength many times over and improved opportunities.

INVESTBANK is one of leading universal banks on the financial market in Kaliningrad Region and the oldest commercial bank in the region. INVESTBANK was founded on June 7,1989. By the end of 2007, INVESTBANK had nearly 30 service locations and more than 45 000 individual depositors. In addition, INVESTBANK managed approximately 5% of all company cash funds in Kaliningrad Region.

Conversbank, prior to the reorganization, was one of the oldest commercial banks in Russia and was founded in 1989 under the Ministry of Nuclear Industry to service the country’s defense complex and later repurpose into a universal lending organization. Conversbank had unique experience in working with corporate clients and conducting banking operations with companies on an international level.

Grankombank, prior to the reorganization, was one of the most dynamic banks in Russia and CIS. Upon the merger with Investbank, the bank had more than 70 of its own service locations and was a member of a partnership network of more than 300 ATMs. GRAN commercial bank was established on December 7,1990 from the Gosbank Chkalovsk division in Sverdlovsk.

Voronezhprombank, prior to the reorganization, had several branches throughout Voronezh Region. Of the 40 lending organizations in the region, only Sberbank surpasses Voronezhprombank in terms of servicing volume. The bank was established on June 25,1992 as Peter the First (Petr Pervyi) Bank, JSC, following a reorganization of Voronezh City Commercial Bank. According to a decision of an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders on December 7,2001, the operating name of the bank was changed to Voronezhsk Promyshlennyi Bank.

The merger of four banks has enabled the banks to realize strategies that had up to now been inaccessible. For example, the line of banking products developed for individual clients at INVESTBANK, Grankombank and Voronezhprombank enable the banks to fully serve the needs of Conversbank, which had previously only been able to service commercial clients. On the other hand, Conversbank’s experience in servicing corporate clients in trade and project financing, as well as currency market and securities market operations, have allowed the united bank to offer such services to a much wider circle of clients at the remaining reorganized banks.

Two companies known widely throughout Russian and the world took part in developing the strategy and alignment of business models during the reorganization of INVESTBANK. Monitor Group was responsible for developing the strategy of the merged bank. Russian audit consulting company FBK—a member of the large international audit association PKF—was engaged in professionally managing the reorganization procedure.