Banque Societe Generale Vostok Successfully Lends to Small Enterprises in the Urals

23.06.2009 — News

THE SVERDLOVSK OBLAST.

Banque Societe Generale Vostok (BSGV) is planning to increase its loan portfolio for small enterprises in Ekaterinburg to 184 million roubles in 2009. The level that has already been achieved is one-third of this amount.

BSGV started lending to small and medium enterprises in the capital of the Sverdlovsk Oblast in March 2009. During the three months loan applications for 80 million roubles in total have been approved, of which 58 million roubles have already been disbursed. Loan applications in the total amount of 22 million roubles are being reviewed now. BSGV representatives told RusBusinessNews that an average loan amount is 10-15 million roubles, interest rate averages 21-22%, and the loan is usually granted for 36 months.

Over 90 clients per month apply to the BSGV office in Ekaterinburg, 60% of them work in trade and 30% represent service industries. Over 80% of the requests are rejected, those from start-ups in particular.

At the beginning of the year corporate loan portfolio of BSGV Ekaterinburg branch totalled 8.6 billion roubles. The bank is interested in small enterprises because, unlike large companies, their reaction to crisis is much quicker and, as a result, they are less exposed to risks. Every fourth citizen of the Sverdlovsk Oblast works for a small business; these companies account for one-third of the turnover of all the regional market players.

Apart from Ekaterinburg, BSGV offers services for small enterprises in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Rostov, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok.