PrivatBank’s transformation is laying the groundwork for its reprivatization

Experts say that if Ukraine’s banking sector is going to thrive, the share of state-owned banks — now roughly half of the sector — will have to shrink.

One way to achieve this is privatization. To do that, PrivatBank, the nation’s largest and most scandal-ridden bank, will have to end up in private hands again. It was nationalized in December 2016 and has been showing profits since record bank fraud under billionaire owners Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennady Boholyubov cost taxpayers $5.5 billion.