Glencore’s former top copper trader and now billionaire investor Aristotelis (Telis) Mistakidis has resumed talks to buy Aegean Baltic Bank (ABBank) and has struck a preliminary agreement to assume a controlling stake in the small but expanding Greek shipping lender.
The initial deal will see Mistakidis buy the 24% stake held in the company by Greek shipowner John Coustas, who heads US-listed container ship and bulker owner Danaos Corp, according to sources speaking on condition of anonymity.
Under the agreement, which is still subject to final closing and subsequent regulator scrutiny, Mistakidis would also buy some of the 42% stake currently held by ABBank’s founding Afthonidis family.
The Tsakos family, which holds another 24% stake in the firm, is not selling its interest.
Mistakidis would ultimately assume majority control of the bank after a share capital increase, the biggest part of which he stands to bankroll.
The Afthonidis family would continue running the bank and be its second-largest shareholder, as the takeover would be “amicable” and even “desirable”, according to one of the sources that spoke to TradeWinds.
Mistakidis’ positive view of the founding family is corroborated by the former Glencore trader himself, who publicly praised ABBank management for its performance in an interview last year with Greek newspaper Kathimerini.
If the deal is completed “nothing in the bank’s management or character would change”, the source added.
A second source concurred, however, that a completion of the agreement should not be taken yet for granted, as negotiations between the parties involved have gone back and forth several times over the past few months.
Mistakidis officially declared his interest in ABBank last summer but talks seemed to have led nowhere until a few weeks ago, as TradeWinds previously reported.
Greek banks are hot
The niche Greek lender closed 2023 with net income rising to €27.2m ($29.7m), on €506m worth of gross loans, according to unaudited results.
With non-performing loans below 1% of the total loan book and a capital adequacy ratio at 24% — about twice that of the average Greek bank — ABBank management told TradeWinds earlier this year that it was ready to engage in new types of financing, such as newbuildings.
ABBank would be just one of several investments Mistakidis has made in the country where he was born.
In his Kathimerini interview last year, the former Glencore trader said this was the “perfect time” to invest in Greece as the nation emerges from its debt crisis.
His financial investments in Greece included a stake in Piraeus Bank — one of the country’s four systemic lenders that almost went bankrupt during the debt crisis a few years ago and which attracted overseas hedge fund investors after a European Union-funded bailout.
On Thursday, the EU-backed bank bailout fund HFSF announced it is selling its entire 27% stake in Piraeus Bank to various investors in Greece and abroad, in a deal worth about €1.35bn.
The offer was oversubscribed by a factor of eight times.
Piraeus Bank has about €2.5bn of performing shipping loans.
