Ukraine’s second-biggest bank by assets, state-owned Oschadbank, says that its Russian competitor, Sberbank, and the nation’s fifth-largest bank, is in violation of intellectual property laws after it shaved the words “of Russia” off its name on Nov. 26.
Oschadbank, with $6.3 billion in assets, filed a lawsuit in the commercial court on Jan. 15 alleging that the Ukrainian unit of Sberbank of Russia, majority-owned ultimately by Russia’s Central Bank, duplicated its trademarked Russian-language name after the rebranding. Oschadbank says it has owned the “Sberbank” trademark since Sept. 10, 2007.
“Zaoshchadzheniya” or Oschad stands for savings in Ukranian as does Sber or “sberezheniya” in Russian.
Both financial institutions are the successor banks in their respective countries of the Soviet Union’s monopoly savings bank.
“The re-naming of Sberbank of Russia is illegal, therefore we filed a lawsuit,” Oschadbank management board chairman Andriy Pyshnyy said in a statement published on the bank’s website. “We consider the attempts by Sberbank of Russia unacceptable in this way to hide the country of origin (of its) equity. However, I understand the motives – indeed Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) has officially recognized Russia as an aggressor country. This accordingly affects customer behavior and can lead them astray, because since Soviet times a certain number of customers have called Oschadbank ‘Sberbank.’”
Sberbank, with over $2 billion in assets as of Oct. 1, didn’t address Oschadbank’s statement in an emailed comment to the Kyiv Post. Sberbank spokeswoman Yevgenia Yeryomina said that the name change took place to bring its new official name as a legal entity and “its corporate (commercial) name” into line “with the same name of the parent legal entity registered in 2015.” She didn’t provide additional commen
Oschadbank first accused Sberbank of trademark violation in a statement published on its website on Dec. 28 and threatened to “use all legal means to protect” its name.
Sberbank in Ukraine has more than 1 million private clients, and services more than 27,000 small-and medium-sized business as well as over 5,000 corporate customers, according to the bank’s website. It has more than 160 bank branches nationwide.
Sberbank also services the Ukrainian government. The nation’s state pension fund on Dec. 22 extended permission for the bank to provide pension payments and other social assistance on behalf the Ukraine state.
Banks with Russian roots control about one-fifth of Ukraine’s banking-sector assets of $48 billion, according to data published on the National Bank of Ukraine’s website.
Alfa Group, controlled by billionaire college friends Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Alexei Kuzmichev, has three banks in Ukraine: Alfa Bank, Neos – formerly Bank of Cyprus – and Ukrsotsbank. The other Russian-affiliated banks are Prominvest, Sberbank, VS Bank, VTB, BM Bank and Forward (formerly Russian Standard). Five of the nation’s top 13 banks by assets, which account for 78 percent of the banking sector’s assets, belong to Russian-affiliated entities.
