Sberbank controls almost a third of the country's deposits and has a mixed loan book.
Its governor, Viktor Gerashchenko, enjoys close personal ties with Sberbank and adamantly defends its privileged status.
Its financing partner, Sberbank, Russia's biggest retail bank, will have 35% and employees 10%.
The banking system, dominated by the government-controlled Sberbank, barely functions for many unconnected would-be borrowers.
There are sound business plan arguments for an Opel-Magna-Sberbank arrangement or for the new, old GM-Opel partnership.
The biggest challenge of all is Sberbank, the state-owned behemoth that holds the majority of the country's savings.
Then it was unsold, re-bid and essentially signed, sealed and delivered to Magna-Sberbank with non-binding promises about retaining jobs.
Other Russian banks in Cyprus include Sberbank, Gazprombank, Otkritie Capital, Aton Capital, UralSib Financial, BCS Financial and Promsvyazbank.
FORBES: Russian Banks Safe From Cyprus Fall Out, Official Says
There are going to be people from SberBank, AIGK. And Stanislav Mitin, too.
First the spoiler was Sberbank, because as the biggest it would pay most towards deposit insurance, in effect covering other banks.
Among the institutions it approached was Kremlin-controlled Sberbank, according to the banker.
The Magna bid, which involves the car parts maker and the Russian Sberbank, had been seen as the frontrunner in the race to buy Opel.
Boris Fedorov, a prominent champion of better corporate governance in Russia's biggest companies, and one of Sberbank's independent directors, believes that the move is mistimed.
Given the central bank's clout, picking a fight over Sberbank's future seems more likely to bring good publicity for the fund managers involved, rather than actual results.
The reforms would also create a deposit-insurance scheme: at the moment only deposits at Sberbank, the country's biggest bank, enjoy an implicit guarantee, because it is owned by the state.
Much of the money comes from a group of corporate sponsors and investors that includes state-owned lender OAO Sberbank, state-owned oil giant OAO Rosneft and oligarch Vladimir Potanin's holding company Interros.
Magna's bid was backed by Russia's state-run Sberbank and Oleg Deripaska's truck firm Gaz, and it has said it wants Opel and GM to gain 20% of the Russian market in the short term.
One big obstacle is Sberbank, state-owned and, uniquely, state-guaranteed.
So even given the domination of state-controlled Sberbank to which customers fled after the 1998 default and devaluation, and which boasts more than half of all retail deposits, over a quarter of all banking assets and access to cheaper capital than private banks there is enough business to go round.
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