July 10 (Reuters) - Russia's Trust Bank has sold its 90.01% stake in digital bank Tochka for 41.5 billion roubles ($453.3 million) to a consortium of investors in Russia's technology sector led by billionaire Vladimir Potanin's Interros group, the companies said on Monday.
Trust Bank is an umbrella for the non-performing loans of Otkritie, Promsvyazbank and B&N - banks rescued by the central bank in 2017 - and has been attempting to recover at least some of nearly 3 trillion roubles spent by the central bank on the bailouts.
Trust said an auction for its stake had been finalised and the deal should go through in the third quarter of 2023. It said high investor interest had seen the starting price rise by 68% since it was put up for sale in April, but disclosed no further detail.
In a separate statement, Tochka said its top managers had formed a consortium of investors holding 9.99% of shares that now intended to exercise its pre-emptive right to consolidate 100% of Tochka at the price determined at auction.
Tochka CEO Andrei Zavadsky said there was no majority investor in the consortium.
Interros confirmed that it was part of the consortium. Both Interros and Zavadsky named tech company VK as another company that had shown interest in joining.
A VK spokesperson said the company was considering the proposal.
The central bank plans to liquidate Trust Bank by 2027, it said in March. Trust Bank said in February it was aiming to return 45 billion roubles to the central bank this year.
Between 2019 and 2022 it recovered 421 billion roubles in assets and paid the central bank 294 billion roubles.
($1 = 91.5525 roubles) (Reporting by Alexander Marrow, Anastasia Lyrchikova and Gleb Stolyarov; editing by Jason Neely)
