GEM Bank Initiative

Vision Finance is currently in talks with number of EM based financial institutions who are interested in combining forces and opening an investment bank which will have a true EM focus and expertise.

Each partner, located at a different country, will provide origination services, while GEM Bank will provide transaction structuring and execution capabilities.  This synergy will enable each local bank to have a direct link to the International Financial Markets, ensuring that the bank (owners) and its clients have a full access to a wider range of services.

STRATEGY

The formation of GEM BANK will take place in the following stages:

1.  Purchase of the London Based Niche Bank, and rebranding its part into GEM Bank

2.  Initial ownership structure of GEM Bank will include:  

                   - previous owners of the bank, who will ensure continuity of the existing franchise

                   - respective EM partnership participating banks, who will ensure EM focus of the bank

                   - Vision Finance who will be managing the process of transformation

3.  The idea is that once GEM Bank is operational, at least 30% of it will be listed on the stock exchange in order to recoup the investments made by respective EM partnership banks

4.  GEM Bank will focus on the following services:

                   - existing services, ensuring continuity of the cash flows

                   - EM origination of transactions (capital raising, derivatives, advisory, private equity, private bankng)

                   - execution of EM transactions via its own network of investors

                   - secondary market making of EM vanilla risk

TAKE OVER PARTNER

Having seen the experiences of some of our competitors who have started to develop the overseas banking offices organically, trying to establish structuring and trading capabilities, distribution and research, obtaining licenses,  we feel that acquisition of the suitable target is a much more economically viable idea.  It took some of our competitors five years to create a functioning entities, and while some of them have managed to do this successfully, the costs that were involved went into hundreds of millions of USD.

Vision Finance has identified and initiated talks with the suitable take over banks, valued at approximately USD20 - 50m, who have in place:

1.   All needed licenses to operate in UK and various other jurisdictions (depending on company) 

2.   Established debt issuance platforms via own balance sheet and SPV entities

3.   Distribution relationships to investment funds, hedge funds, private banking, 

4.   Brokerage facilities, including trading arm

5.   A reasonably successful present day operations, including legal, accounting and tax functions

EM PARTNERSHIP BANKS

Vision Finance has number of strong relationships across EM world.  We are already in talks with number of our partners about the GEM Bank initiative.  These banks tend to be their national champions in dealing particularly with corporate clients, and often provision of local brokerage services.

The idea is to have ONE bank per country from as many countries as it is feasible, ensuring 

    - small investments for many participants

    - wide coverage of the combined GEM Bank, focusing not only on key BRIC markets, but also frontier markets

    - full economies of scale in operations, ensuring that services can be shared

The required investments, depending on the origin of the bank (the bigger the economy the bigger the investment and ownership), range between USD100,000 - USD10,000,000.

VISION FINANCE

Vision Finance is not only responsible for the formation of the GEM Bank and subsequent integration of the Emerging Markets platform into it, but it will also ensure that there are new structures and execution capabilities, either via GEM Bank platform, or where needed via the third parties.

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