OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2011. Shareholders approved the Board's report on the implementation of key activities planned for 2010 and identified the main areas of activity for 2011.

Major economic trends of last year were named at the meeting. It was the first year when we could observe GDP growth of 4,2%, inflation reduction and growth of the industry.

For the first time bank decided to pay dividends on preferred and common shares. The following amounts to the payment of the dividends were established:

preferred shares - UAH 25,1 thousand.

on ordinary shares - UAH 8683.2 thousand.

Bank's financial results of last year are as follows: net income of UAH 29 million and the decrease in assets has been seen due to the timely repayment of loans by the most of the clients.

Chairman of the Board noted that virtually the entire year, the bank was working on the creating of the loan portfolio reserves, it took 96% of operating profit. Borys Tymonkin: "Bank has the ability to generate real profit. We will finish the formation of massive reserves and move to normal operation. The potential profitability of the bank is very high."

Portfolio of corporate clients had been reduced over the past year. The reason for this is a very conservative approach bank had in granting new loans. In fact, the green light was given only to the agricultural sector. But it should be mentioned that despite this the bank managed to engage new corporate clients. Ukrsotsbank was named the best bank in Ukraine in providing trade finance services according to Global Finance magazine.

The Bank plans to promote the corporate sector in 2011 very actively: "Over the last two months we have fundamentally changed the scheme for decision-making process on corporate business. For the first time since the crisis we provided corporate centers with the limits of up to UAH 5 mln. In certain cases the decision can be directly passed to the main committee, bypassing the macro-regions - says CEO of the Bank Borys Tymonkin. - In fact, every week we optimize this scheme because we want to create an effective credit machine, which will effectively serve the growing needs in funding of the economy.”

There had been seen an increase in the deposits volume up to 28% during 2010. It was noted at the meeting that in the first half of the year bank was mainly aimed at attracting short-term deposits, while in the second half of the year long-term deposits have become a key product.

Much effort has been devoted to development of alternative sales channels. The new draft of multi-channel banking saw the progress, as evidenced by the opening of new ATMs in the combined network and the increase in the amount of Internet banking service users.

Borys Tymonkin: "As to the numbers of this year: every month we have the doubled number of new deals for cars. We granted 10 mortgage loans in March. It’s a ridiculous figure for us, if to compare this to pre-crisis level, when 300 loans were granted per month. But if we analyse the situation of recent years, then we’ll see that, for example, for the whole past year, we’ve granted 1-2 mortgage loans. This year we have granted 10 of them for just a few months and can see that this process has taken a good pace."

The Bank has achieved a decrease in assets and liabilities imbalance and extinguished the funding under the UniCredit Group for USD 223 million. Total external debt was reduced by approximately UAH 1 billion.

The main result of the Information Technology Department of the Bank was the introduction of central banking system - FlexCube.

Among the priorities of the USB's in 2011 are:

processes optimization and performance effectivization (the merger with UniCredit Bank Ukraine, the introduction of centralized system ERP SAP);

commercial activities (expanding corporate customer base, focus on Private Banking, the development of alternative sales channels, expanding the range of products, the dynamic growth of deposit base);

asset quality improvement (focusing on the restructuring of credit debt, risk monitoring of loan portfolio, improving credit processes).

The meeting also has re-elected the Supervisory Board structure of 8 members. The new structure comprises Gianni Franco Papa, Massimiliano Fossati, Harald Vertneg, Paolo Cederle, Fabio Fornaroli, Alicja Kornasiewicz, Doris Tomanek, Lorenzo Gianotti. The Supervisory Board of the Bank was headed by Willibald Cernko (UniCredit Bank Austria AG).