Russia and Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has suddenly ramped up demands on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development after the institution spent years searching for a new role. President Odile Renaud-Basso talks to Euromoney about the bank’s strategy and plans to boost its capacity through a €4 billion capital increase.

BlackRock, JPMorgan and McKinsey are working on plans for a new development finance institution focused on Ukraine’s reconstruction. The project has already had to temper some ambitions, but its advisers still hope it can propel flows of private-sector money to Ukraine in years to come.

Macroeconomic disruptions and regulatory scrutiny will drive market participants to adopt a practical environmental, social and governance strategy in the year ahead – one that is less about narrative and more about materiality.

The country has one of the world’s best-performing economies with one of the few emerging market currencies to be appreciating against the dollar. It also has large numbers of highly skilled Russians fleeing across the border to avoid conscription. National Bank of Georgia governor Koba Gvenetadze speaks to Euromoney.

Societe Generale has exited, and Citi is winding down in retail, but the two biggest remaining Western European players in Russia are also spending a lot of time working out their exposures and operations in the country.

Societe Generale’s choice of Slawomir Krupa to succeed Frédéric Oudéa suggests an approach of riding out the storm and continuing elements of Oudéa’s recent strategy, rather than any radical change.

Fossil fuel assets were set to become obsolete in the transition to net zero. But the war in Ukraine is forcing European governments to secure alternative energy sources and driving demand for coal, oil and gas back in the wrong direction. With the global energy transition seemingly pitched against national energy security agendas, banks are trying to navigate a difficult path through the turmoil.

When Margeir Pétursson bought Bank Lviv in 2006, he had much to learn about operating a bank in a country permanently in Russia’s crosshairs. Talking to Euromoney six months after the invasion, he says there is opportunity among the chaos in this key Ukrainian city.

PrivatBank chief executive Gerhard Boesch looks to the future and the bank’s war-delayed privatization.

Oleksandr Pysaruk, chief executive of Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, describes how contingency planning for war rapidly morphed into the real thing.

Despite the Russian bombs pounding Ukraine, there have been no wartime bank runs, no bank collapses or even the suggestion of a systemic wobble. That is largely thanks to the work of former National Bank of Ukraine governor Valeria Gontareva. She tells Euromoney that the time for further reform to the stricken country’s banking sector is now.

China has in the past felt compelled to accept the terms of IMF programmes in struggling nations without due consideration of its own views.