Russ Oil-Gas

MOSCOW, April 26 (RIA Novosti) - Gazprombank, a subsidiary of Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom, said Wednesday its assets rose 30% year on year in the first quarter of 2006 to 479.1 billion rubles (about $17.4 billion). The bank said pre-tax profit had jumped 294% to 6.7 billion rubles (about $243 million) in the reporting period compared with 1.7 billion rubles (about $61 million) in 1Q 2005. The bank's shareholder equity grew 48% to 33.9 billion rubles (about $1.2 billion) against 22.9 billion rubles (about $832 million) in the period last year. The value of the bank's retail deposits declined from 34.4 billion rubles (about $1.25 billion) in the first quarter of 2005 to 32.1 billion rubles (about $1.17 billion) due to changes in the accounting rules formulated by the Central Bank of Russia, the bank said in a statement. Gazprombank earlier said its net profit rose 310% in the first quarter of 2006 to 5.38 billion rubles (about $195 million) from 1.31 billion rubles (about $47.6 million) a year earlier. Gazprombank is one of Russia's largest banks in terms of assets.