Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday praised the just completed privatization sale of shares in the nation's biggest bank, Sberbank, which netted $5.208 billion for the state.

“This is one of the most profitable deals in the past ten years,” Putin said in Pavlodar at a Russian-Kazakh forum on cooperation.

Sberbank placed 7.58 percent of shares in a secondary public offering that wrapped up on Tuesday.

“For every $100 invested in Sberbank 10 years ago, its majority shareholder, the Central Bank of Russia, earned $3,700,” he said.

“That’s a very good yield,” Putin said, adding: “It indicates that our banks have great potential.”

First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov echoed the president’s words, saying it was a “mega-deal conducted at just the right time from the standpoint of the investment climate, investor confidence in the Russian market.”

“We anticipate several major, serious deals before year-end. I hope we will bring them off, but everything depends on the market and investor sentiment,” Shuvalov said.