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RCB Bank is an international bank based in Cyprus.
In 1963, the Moscow Narodny Bank Ltd (Moscow Narodny Bank (London)), formerly the Moscow People's Bank (London), established a branch in Beirut for foreign trade and export support from USSR to Middle East countries. In 1985 during the height of the Libyan-United States crisis, the Beirut branch closed and some staff and documents were transferred to Cyprus receiving its papers in 1989 from the State Bank of the USSR and was later transferred to Vneshtorgbank (VTB) becoming a full subsidiary of VTB in August 1995. In the summer of 2002, VTB owned the controlling stake in the RCB Bank and also had controlling stakes in the Vienna, Austria based Donau Bank and the Luxembourg based East West United Bank (EAUB) and in 2005 VTB held 100% of RCB.
RCB Bank was founded in 1995, and formerly known as Russian Commercial Bank (Cyprus), until November 2013.
RCB Bank is based in Limassol, with branches in Nicosia and nine other locations in Cyprus as of July 2018, and in Luxembourg. It has representative offices in Moscow and London. The chairman is Christakis Santis, and the CEO is Kirill Zimarin.
Other members of the board of directors include Economics Nobel laureate Sir Christopher Pissarides, former foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, former attorney general Petros Clerides, former permanent secretary at the ministries of finance and justice Andreas Tryfonides, and former ambassador and permanent secretary at the foreign ministry Sotos Zackheos.
In November 2014 RCB Bank was categorized as significant EU bank under direct supervision of the ECB through the SSM. Since 2016, RCB Bank has been a partner of the EIB and the EIF in financing investment projects implemented with the EU funds in Cyprus.
In August 2017, Zimarin increased his ownership of RCB to 49.9% by acquiring a $100 million stake (19.85%) in the Russian Otkritie Financial Corporation Bank.
As of 2018, VTB through its holdings and subsidiaries is one of the largest shareholder in RCB and continues to fund and guarantee most of RCB Bank's loans. Close relationships of money transfers between VTB and RCB occur through the Pictet Bank in Switzerland.
