YEREVAN, February 4. / ARKA /. Converse Bank’s liquidity is quite high and it will meet the requirement of the Central Bank to increase the total capital by 2017, the bank’s CEO Tigran Davtyan said today.

Speaking at a news conference he said Converse Bank is among top ten local banks in terms of capital size and will have no recapitalization-related problem.

In January Armenia’s Central Bank decided to raise the minimum amount of commercial banks’ total capital to 30 billion drams from the current 5 billion drams from January 1, 2017. It said the measure is aimed at encouraging mergers and consolidation of banks, which is expected to create a sound competitive environment and make banking services more available.

According to Davtyan, Converse Bank is considering several options- a merger, a purchase of another bank or increasing capital by the major shareholder.

"In any case, the required amount is not too large for our bank and by 2017, we will raise the capital to the required size," he said.

Converse Bank registered in 1993 is owned by an Argentinean businessman of Armenian origin Eduardo Eurnekian (95 percent) and the Armenian Apostolic Church (5 percent).

The bank's assets at the end of 2014 stood at about 150 billion drams; its liabilities - at 126 billion drams, its capital – at 23 billion drams. The bank earned 2.4 billion drams in net profit last year, the fivefold of its profit in 2013. $ 1 - 476.64 drams). -0-