Advestra advises Monte Valle Partners on the acquisition of TradeXBank

Monte Valle Partners and M3 Groupe Management have completed the acquisition of an unknown minority stake and majority stake respectively in TradeXBank from Sberbank of Russia

Advestra has acted as leg­al coun­sel for Monte Valle Part­ners, an invest­ment firm foun­ded by Amer­ic­an Steph­en P. Lynch, and coordin­ated the leg­al work­stream for the buy­ers group on the acquis­i­tion of TradeXBank, formerly Sberb­ank Switzer­land. Monte Valle offices are located in Miami, London and Moscow. Monte Valle works with distressed assets in Russia, Europe and Eurasia. Lynch is an American entrepreneur who has been doing business in Russia since 1992.

Sberb­ank of Rus­sia sold all its shares in Sberb­ank Switzer­land to m3 Groupe Hold­ing after obtain­ing all requis­ite reg­u­lat­ory approvals from FINMA, OFAC and SECO. Fol­low­ing the trans­ac­tion, the bank was renamed TradeXBank. Under new own­er­ship by Swiss and U.S. share­hold­ers, TradeXBank is no longer sub­ject to sanc­tions in Switzer­land, the EU, the UK, and the US. It aims at deploy­ing its expert­ise to renew its com­mod­it­ies trade fin­an­cing busi­ness and improve the dis­rup­ted flow of fer­til­izers and agri­cul­tur­al com­mod­it­ies in Ukraine and the Black Sea Region.

Advestra has advised on the acquis­i­tion, includ­ing the reg­u­lat­ory and sanc­tions related aspects of the trans­ac­tion in Switzer­land. The team included partner Rashid Bahar (pictured), associates Alex­an­der Fisch, Fabi­an Wild, Valer­ie Bayard (all cor­por­ate| m&a and fin­an­cial ser­vices) as well as Thomas Reut­ter, Beda Kaufmann, Daniel Raun, Mar­lon Ber­to­lini and Levy Corba (all cor­por­ate/m&a).