The FINANCIAL -- According to Bloomberg.com Liberty Capital LLC, Romanian billionaire Dinu Patriciu’s Georgia-based investment vehicle, is shopping for banks in frontier markets, his business partner Lado Gurgenidze said.
Liberty paid $15 million for a controlling stake in People’s Bank of Georgia , the former Soviet republic’s seventh- largest lender, in September. The bank distributes pension payments for the Georgian government.
“We have enough cash for a couple more deals of this scope and size,” Gurgenidze, a former prime minister of Georgia, said in an interview in London late yesterday. “We’re still a very young fund, and we’re still in the middle of turning round our first investment, so it may well be a while before I find my second bank.”
Gurgenidze ruled out acquiring another bank in Georgia. “We already own one, so we’re done,” he said.
Liberty will invest only in banks in “small frontier markets with low corruption, low taxes and open economies,” he said. Four or five countries in Africa and three or four in eastern Europe fit the bill, he said.
Patriciu’s stake in Liberty is “over 50 percent,” Gurgenidze said.
Patriciu is Romania’s richest man, with a fortune of $1.8 billion according to Forbes magazine. He led the takeover of Romanian oil refiner Rompetrol Rafinare Constanta SA in 1998, then sold the company to Kazakh energy producer KazMunaiGaz National Co.
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