The credit portfolio of former shareholders in PrivatBank (Dnipro) has been restructured for 10 years with quarterly payments, PrivatBank Board Chairman Oleksandr Shlapak said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

"The agreements are the following: the 10-year restructuring and quarterly payments. First payments are to arrive soon," he said.

Shlapak said that collateral for the credits is to be added by July 1, 2017.

"No one said about the payment of the portfolio before July 1. This concerned the completion of the restructuring of the portfolio – how it will be rescheduled and the inclusion of collateral for the portfolio before July 1. If the former shareholder manages to do this, we are friendly, if not – other steps will be done," he said.

He said that today reserves of UAH 155 billion for this credit portfolio were formed.

"Maybe, this is not the entire portfolio. We are working on its stocktaking. I feel that UAH 155 billion is not all the reserves we would have to form," he said.

Shlapak said that under a decision of the supervisory board a special division was created. It is to carry out a stocktaking of the portfolio of affiliated persons within two months.

"We should understand what is being serviced and what is not. What the prospects for these loans are. Then we will hold negotiations with former shareholders," he said.

He expressed hope that these negotiations will be held by those who signed the agreement with former shareholders of the bank – the prime minister and governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU).

The bank head said that if logics of the year-end talks held by the state authorities with PrivatBank's shareholders (Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov) remains, first payments on these credits will be only in 2018-2019.

He said that this bad credit portfolio is covered by reserves in full, and it does not affect the bank's operations. However, it is the reason of the loss of UAH 135 billion. The bank is interested in the portolio being serviced.

PrivatBank was founded in 1992. Earlier, its major stockholders were Boholiubov with 33.2525% as direct participation and 8.3244% and indirect as of March 31, 2016 and Kolomoisky with 41.6572% and 8.3244%, respectively.

On December 18, 2016, the government decided to nationalize the bank. The Finance Ministry took over 100% of PrivatBank's equity capital.

The bank ranked first among 100 operating banks in terms of total assets worth UAH 271.836 billion as of October 1, 2016, according to the NBU.