Ukraine reconstruction bank eyes near $1 billion in committed capital - Ukraine official

By Victoria Waldersee, Megan Davies and Stefania Spezzati

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) -A Ukraine reconstruction bank being set up by Kyiv with help from BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase has at least $500 million in committed capital and could be ready to launch in 5-6 months with close to $1 billion, a senior Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.

"We have at least 500 million in commitments - I think it will be close to 1 billion commitments in catalytic capital," Rostyslav Shurma, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office said. Catalytic capital refers to capital-like investments, debt and guarantees in which the investor accepts higher risk for greater social impact.

Kyiv engaged BlackRock and JPMorgan last year to help set up a fund to raise public capital that could attract private investment for Ukraine's post-war reconstruction, estimated to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Of around 280 projects that had applied to the fund so far, BlackRock and JPMorgan saw between 25 and 30 as ones that could be seriously considered, Shurma said.

Blackrock Vice-Chairman Philipp Hildebrand told Reuters earlier this week in Davos that the fund could be ready for action within the year.

The asset manager was assisting Kyiv in discussions to seek sovereign money from development banks or principal donor countries to mitigate risk for private investments, Hildebrand, a member of the company's Global Executive Committee, said.

"We want to be ready to deploy with at least soft commitments from donor countries," Hildebrand said.

Risk would need to be reduced down to OECD levels for BlackRock assets - consisting of pension funds - to be mobilised, he said.

"That money cannot be invested in very high risk enterprises."

The U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery Penny Pritzker, who attended a meeting with Zelenskiy on Tuesday, said there were still many questions "about what's possible today versus what's definitely possible in the future when you're postwar".

Pritzker highlighted efforts by JPMorgan and BlackRock, saying they had indicated early interest from "forward-leaning" investors willing to take higher risk investments and some individual investors.

Also on Tuesday, Zelenskiy's office said he had met JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and other senior JPMorgan executives, BlackRock's top management, executives from Bridgewater Associates, Carlyle Group, Blackstone, Dell and ArcelorMittal in Davos.

(Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Megan Davies, Stefania Spezzati and Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Alexander Smith and Tomasz Janowski)