Gazprombank

History

The Commercial Bank of the Gas Industry “Gazprombank” was established on July 31, 1990. In August 1996, its organizational and legal form was changed to a limited liability company; on November 13, 2001, the bank became a closed joint-stock company under the name “Joint-Stock Commercial Bank of the Gas Industry ‘Gazprombank’”; from August 31, 2007, it operated as an open joint-stock company under the same name, and since December 2014 it has operated as a joint-stock company “Gazprombank.”

In August 2005 for 37.22 billion rubles, Gazprombank purchased Gazprom Media, the largest Russian media holding, which includes the former Media Most holdings of Vladimir Gusinsky including the Sem Days publishing house, Echo of Moscow, both the NTV channel and NTV Plus, and Izvestia newspaper, from the bank's parent company Gazprom. After Gazprom-Media took over "Media Most" in 2000, Gazprom-Media received Filipp Bobkov's entire former KGB 5th directorate (Political police) which was responsible for disinformation, control of dissidents, and executions including all of its employees, its database and the Filipp Bobkov founded security service that was accused of attempting an assassination in 1994 of Boris Berezovsky. The entire archive of 5th KGB Main Directorate was taken to Media-Most.

In 2012, OJSC Gazprom owned a 41.73% stake in Gazprombank and NPF Gazfond owned a 46.92% stake in Gazprom. Most of the stake in Yuri Shamalov's Gazfond is managed by Anatoly Gavrilenko's Lider Management which is part of the SOGAZ insurance group which, until March 2014, was controlled by the Vladimir Putin associated Rossiya Bank which has Yuri Kovalchuk as its largest shareholder. In March 2014 Rossiya bank sold its indirect control of Lider to Gasfond which has a 45% stake in Lider. As of November 2014, Gazfond is the largest shareholder of Gazprombank which controls Gazprom Media.

The bank was nominated in 2014 for the annual Emerging Market Bond Awards, hosted by EuroWeek.

In August 2022, the state capitalized Gazprombank by 50 billion rubles at the expense of the Russian National Wealth Fund. The authorized capital of the bank increased to 246.85 billion rubles. Now the state owns a share of 36.44%.