We mentioned in our previous publication of “Banking system: illusive
formation”, that we were going to write about concrete representatives
of the banking system in our next publication. We also promissed, that
we would try to write about the assessments and opinions of the big
banks owners and managers of different bank sectors. Alas, we couldn’t
do that.
Usually people say, that “there is no harm in trying”, but in this case
it turned out, that “there was harm in trying”. As we know, bankers and
financiers are close with each other and don’t like to share their
opinions with journalists. So, this time we have to violate the
standards of the articles on “the difficult way of becoming the
national bourgeoisie”, and here we will not write about the opinions of
the representatives of this field representatives, but rather, the
information, which we got as a result of mixing our non-official
information and the public hearsay about the banking system.
Meeting real formation among the illusive ones
The assessment, that our banking system is not only formed as an
institution with European standards, but also is formed so well, that
is considered to be the best one in the territory of CIS countries, was
based on the financial and economical marks of the banking system
assessment. And the formation was considered as suspicious, because
this was a result of the analysis of those marks , according to which
our banking system falls in the last places among the other countries
banking systems in the world. This means that the banking system almost
doesn’t fulfill its main responsibility for financial mediation.
Anyway, the banking system in Armenia plays its real role. And if its
role is not big enough in the economy according to macroeconomical
marks, this doesn’t mean, that it doesn’t influence on the country’s
economical and, why not, also social-political life. At least bankers
and financiers are considered to be one of the most intellectual and
professional groups in the society. Only their influence on social
values is enough to discuss not only separate banks and the whole
banking system, but also their activities. So, discussing the
functional activities and features of the biggest banks among the 21
resident banks of Armenia (there are no non-resident banks in Armenia),
we will try to make up the banking system of Armenia, and as a result,
we can create an imagea bout the whole system with the help of the
induction method.
Who is who in our banking system, or, in other words, about our Rotshields and Morgans
We classified the diferent segments of the banking system conditionally
and we are not going to consider it as the truth, like the Central Bank
does. Of course, some other private companies rate the banks too, the
best of which probably is “Arca”, which made news activities
classification. But our goal in this article is not to make assessments
only according to their financial and banking marks. So we have chosen
the banks from the following fields and by the following order:
1. “Armsavingsbank” (ASB), as a network bank,
2. “Anelik Bank”, as a bank, specialized in money transfer,
3. “AGBA” Bank, as a bank with concrete functional essentiality,
4. “Armeconombank”, as a bank which has corporative
relations with international financial institutions and realizes joint
programs,
5. HSBC, as an international bank.
At the same time, as we mentioned in our last publication, the marks,
showing the connection level of our banking system and economy, are so
small yet amazing. Since we can not reveal the “commercial secrets” of
different banks, we will not discuss the credit holding construction of
the banks and their diversification. “Armsavingsbank” is the biggest
bank in Armenia with its network system and its branches. As we know,
this bank is a private bank, which was privatized from the former
Soviet “Savingsbank” Armenian branch. Much was spoken and written about
this bank privatization: 5 years ago this bank was privatized by
Mikhail Baghdasarov, who was well-known and used to be the monopolist
of gasoline, who paid very little money for this privatization. And
later, probably with startegic purposes, most of the share of that bank
was sold to Russian “Vneshtorgbank”. ASB places a big role not only in
the banking system, but also in the political life. If, in case,
something happens in the political life, this bank’s branches in almost
all the cities of Armenia can become pre-election and political party
clubs. It is worth to mention, that ASB has a privileged position in
our banking system, because, according to some specialists of the
banking system, who didn’t want to present themselves, the Central Bank
has a special approachment to this bank: starting from its
responsibilities to the CB and ending up with violating the savings
requirements. You can make sure of this by permanently reading the
publications of this bank. In order to keep our readers away from this
“labyrinth”, we will not go deep into the professional bank
terminology. “Ardshininvest” Bank, which was founded on the base of
“Ardshinbank” as a result of suspicious developments, has also good
chances to become a network bank. On the other hand, according to its
reports, this bank fulfills its responsibilities well. “Conversebank”
can be included in the list of category banks, but with some
exceptions. According to experts, Conversebank is really already formed
and meets the European standards. Smbat Nasibyan, who is one of the
main share holders and the manager of this bank, is considered to be a
professional banker.
Although nowadays almost all the banks of Armenia make money transfers,
the leader in this field and the most famous bank is “Anelik”. Besides
making money transfers, this bank renders other services too. The
president of Anelik Bank, Armen Chzmachyan, who is also the head of
Armenia Bank Union, is also in the list of the best five bankers in
Armenia. There is much information about the share holders of this
bank. There are a lot of Russian businessmen among the share holders of
Anelik Bank. And it is not amazing, that Anelik Bank is the only one
among the Armenian banks that has a big branch in Moscow also.
We must pay special attention to AGBA Bank. This bank was founded in
the scopes of EU programs and is maily specialized in giving credits to
agricultural economies. Of course, AGBA cannot be considered as a
specialized bank according to the classic standards, because it also
deals with universal bank services. At the same time, giving credits to
agricultural economies, AGBA also has another very important function:
the social function, because the agricultural economies not only take
care of their businesses, but also have perspectives for future
development. We must add that the president of AGBA Bank, Stepan
Gishyan, is also considered to be one of the most professional bankers
in Armenia .
The other two “Civil” banks, “Armeconombank” and “HSBC” Bank, are in
another level. “Armeconombank”, whose main share holders are the
Sukiasyans, is included in the World Bank group and it has already been
several years, that this bank is the only Armenian bank that cooperates
and makes projects with the European Bank of Reconstruction and
Development (EBRD). This organization is also a share holder for this
bank and holds share of 25 %+1 stocks. The manager of “Armeconombank”
is Armen Osipyan, who is considered to be one of the most prestigious
bankers of Armenia for more than 10 years. As for HSBC Bank (Honkong
Shanhay Banking Corporation), it is a bank, which was founded on the
base of the former “Midland” Bank, and it is considered to be the best
international bank in Armenia. This bank also has a good credit holding
in the small credit service field of Armenia. We write about these two
banks together, because these two banks were given the same assessment
by the CB. This assessment means, that both those banks fully comply
with the European banking model.
As it was mentioned above, the separation of the banking system done by
different representatives was done on a conditional level. But this
doesn’t mean, that our banking system is limited to the above mentioned
banks. The experts of this field, taking into account the main banking
marks, say, that “Areximbank”, “Cascade Bank”, “BTA Invest” Bank,
“Inecobank” have high chances to become good sustainable banks.
We have to repeat, that our decision to discuss different banks is
relative. And in order to understand why other banks were not included
in this list, we don’t have to look for hidden reasons, but it is
enough to know about their marks: their assessed and main capital, the
interrelation of their assets and liabilities, the capacity and the
form of their credit holding, etc.
Of course, it will be a mistake not to talk about the CB when talking
about banks. It will be something like not to talk about the Central
Committee we refer to the party formation in the Soviet times, or to
write about a fauna without mentioning lions. These comparisons are not
by chance. Now, the CB plays a role in the banking system very much
like the role the Central Committee of Communism party used to play in
socialism. In other words, here we can apply the principle of Oruel,
which says, that “everyone is equal to each other, but some are more
equal”. This assessment can be proved both by banking macro marks and
by the current formal and non-official relations between private banks
and the CB. We just don’t want our readers to pay their attention to
numbers, which at first seem to be nonsense.
By the way, there was a technical mistake in our previous publication.
The interrelation of credit investments / GDP of Armenia was written as
11 %, instead of 21 %, for which we apologize first of all to our
readers and the CB.
P.S. “The next publication of the articles on “the difficult way
of making the national bourgeoisie” will be in the second half of
October”. It will concern the cigarette market of Armenia, i.e. we will
write about both the local cigarette oligarch, as well as about the
businessmen, who import cigarettes.