Arins Group, which owns Ardshinbank, Armenia’s largest bank, has signed an agreement to acquire Georgian lender TeraBank and the Emirati royal family-owned five-star Biltmore Tbilisi hotel.

Arins Group is solely owned by Armenian businessperson Karen Safaryan. The group came to the agreement to acquire the Biltmore Tbilisi through one of its subsidiaries, AGE SA.

The transaction to acquire TeraBank has not yet been completed, and its closing is subject to approval by the Georgian National Bank, which told OC Media that the acquisition could take at least two months to be completed.

TeraBank is the sixth largest bank in Georgia, according to National Bank indicators.

Ardshinbank is Armenia’s largest bank, holding a 21% market share in the country, and ranking first by assets, deposits, capital, retail deposits, net profit, and branch network.

The Biltmore Tbilisi is directly owned by the Dhabi Group, which is shared by several members of the Emirati royal family. According to Georgia’s business registry, Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahyan owns a 66% share in the holding.

According to his biography on Ardshinbank’s website, Safaryan had ‘dozens of businesses in Russia and Armenia’ by the early 2000s. However, it suggests that Safaryan had divested of his Russian assets in 2019, and that his business activities ‘have been concentrated solely in Armenia, in the financial sector’. It also lists the construction of the Government Building in Yerevan and the Yerevan Municipality building as some of his ‘significant development projects’.

The proposed transactions have prompted criticism from Georgian opposition politician Roman Gotsiridze, who described the departure of the Emirati-owned Dubai Group from Georgia as unfortunate.

Speaking to OC Media, Gotsiridze argued that the sale represented the loss of a significant foreign investor at a time when Georgia was already facing concerns over its investment appeal.

Gotsiridze attributed the departure of a major foreign investor partly to what he characterised as Georgia’s growing international isolation and declining investment attractiveness.

According to revised figures from the National Statistics Bureau, Georgia received $1.9 billion in foreign direct investment in 2025, representing a 19.3% increase compared with 2024. The revised figure is also 12.5% higher than the preliminary estimate for 2025.

The bureau has revised historical foreign direct investment figures dating back to 2021, with the updated data reflecting changes to previously reported figures and the reasons behind those revisions.

The hotel, located in central Tbilisi, was unveiled in 2016, with then-Prime Minister Giorgi Kvrikashvili and Sheikh Nahyan attending the opening ceremony.

The tower of the Biltmore Tbilisi proved to be controversial, with some saying it looked out of place in Tbilisi’s skyline.

Nata Peradze, an environmental and urban activist, told OC Media that while the building itself was controversial, ‘for a long time, we have not had a mayor responsible for urban planning, asking for public opinion’.

‘Everything depended on personal taste and an arrogant approach’, she said.