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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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PrivatBank chief executive Gerhard Boesch looks to the future and the bank’s war-delayed privatization.
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Oleksandr Pysaruk, chief executive of Raiffeisen Bank Ukraine, describes how contingency planning for war rapidly morphed into the real thing.
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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.
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China has in the past felt compelled to accept the terms of IMF programmes in struggling nations without due consideration of its own views.
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The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have brutally exposed the fragility of global supply chains.
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India’s refusal to take a side over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is typical of a geopolitical approach that aims to keep everyone onside – to India’s advantage. Doing so helps the country to keep inflation in check, the one threat to an exceptionally powerful domestic story that is enticing the banking sector.
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Ukraine’s recent debt restructuring agreements with international bondholders give it a better prospect of returning to market once its war with Russia ends. But the IMF – more used to pulling countries out of purely economic crises – faces a policy challenge in assisting a country at war.
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With Turkey maintaining its ties with Russia, the risk of secondary sanctions against Turkish banks rises. But even if such sanctions are targeted, the central bank’s policies are already risking a deeper crisis.
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If Russia stops the gas this winter, the damage to European banks will be worse than Covid, and Germany will be at the centre of the storm.
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China’s support for Russia is part of its strategy to reduce the world’s dependence on the greenback – might it work?
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The idea of capping the price of Russian oil and gas exports sounds good in theory, but it might be better to test methods for energy rationing.
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Kyrylo Shevchenko, governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, has been corresponding with Euromoney as war rages in his country. Here he tells us how the central bank has kept the banking system operational and protected the currency in extraordinary circumstances.
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SocGen’s deal to sell Russian lender Rosbank back to Vladimir Potanin’s Interros Capital is painful, but could help it to move on from the war in Ukraine.
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Without Russia, Raiffeisen will be a different entity – one focused on safer countries in the former Habsburg heartlands. The low home-market profitability that Russia once served to mitigate, however, will be more evident than ever.
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A number of commodity currencies have received an unexpected boost from the conflict in Ukraine as Western economies look to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels from Russia more rapidly than previously planned.
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A combination of geographical position and commodity strength is working in the country’s favour.
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The financial frontline of Russia’s war in Ukraine runs through the offices of overworked sanctions officers at banks everywhere. It is their job to freeze the accounts and assets of sanctioned oligarchs. The pressure is colossal: get it wrong or act too slow, and the impact on a bank’s brand and bottom line will be felt for years to come.
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The war in Ukraine has further highlighted the benefits of Banco Santander’s diversification across Europe and the Americas, according to executive chairman Ana Botín. However, its European home market may be a big disadvantage in Citi’s looming auction of Mexican lender Banamex.
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ESG has been an intense focus for banks in recent years – not least for their communications teams. But with war in Ukraine, ESG has hit its first real test – and the talking has stopped.
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Margin hikes are raising the table stakes in markets from commodities to stock loans. Margins may be a better risk signal than curiously subdued measures like the ViX index of equity volatility.
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The Russia-Ukraine war is a sobering reminder for all treasurers that geopolitical risk can escalate rapidly. The importance of forward planning cannot be overstated.
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The provider of embedded banking to UK fintechs heads to Europe after its technology achieves speedy implementation of Russian sanctions screening.
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When a group of leading banks were unable to source the roubles needed to deliver in settlement of FX swaps, compression trades saved the day. The episode serves to highlight how fragile very large, complex and interconnected financial markets have become.
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What practical steps do banks have to take when a client falls foul of a sanction list?
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Western governments need to wise up to how smart Putin and his people are at hiding and moving their money.
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Despite the current financial turmoil, proponents of de-dollarization still have a mountain to climb. But blockchain and digital currencies could put their goal within eventual reach.
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Where do the borders of ESG lie – now and in the future? Investors from the US to China are revisiting these questions and finding thorny and often unpalatable answers, even as they dump Russian assets for ethical reasons. The results are set to shape the financial world’s relationship with sustainability for years to come.
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The early days of war in Ukraine saw the price of bitcoin rise. New technology now improves the prospect that wealth stored in crypto may be spent.
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As the US takes action to tighten sanctions on Russia by banning energy imports, Europe is trying to pull together a plan to wean itself off Russian gas through greater use of LNG and renewables.
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It has been a tough few years for Europe’s banks, but they finally seemed to be firmly on the road to recovery in early 2022. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Will the financial turmoil that follows derail the sector’s hard-fought-for revival?
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The prospect of China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System vying with or supplanting Swift grabbed attention in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But CIPS isn’t ready for the big time. It is too small and underdeveloped, and is a policy vehicle dominated by Beijing for the purpose of globalizing the yuan.
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Western governments hope Russian citizens will blame the regime of president Vladimir Putin and seek change. That is a gamble.
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In just a few years, the New Eurasian Land Bridge, which conveys rail freight between China and Europe, became a key part of Beijing’s fading Belt and Road Initiative. Thanks to sanctions levied against state operator Russian Railways, that vital trade link threatens to be disrupted – and possibly severed.
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With little chance of a swift resolution to the conflict in Ukraine, the effect on FX markets is being felt well beyond the bounds of the former Soviet Union. But not all reactions have been typical for a crisis.
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Oligarchs that use shell companies and fake identities may dodge the pain of Russian banks being shut out from Swift, heaping it on innocent people instead.
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Several sovereign funds have either pledged to leave Russia or are considering doing so. But how will they get out? Could their exit enrich those that sanctions are intended to penalize?
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ING and Intesa Sanpaolo could take bigger hits than Societe Generale in a ‘walk-away’ scenario, according to Autonomous Research.
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Jane Fraser can front Citi’s investor day with good news about consumer divestments in Asia. It is hard to see a Russia sale now, though.
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Exclusive: The head of Ukraine’s largest bank tells Euromoney that it is refilling ATMs and keeping branches open even as Russian attacks intensify.
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The US has named Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and its chief executive in strikingly harsh language as part of its sanctions package. Is RDIF ‘a slush fund for president Vladimir Putin’ or a legitimate vehicle ‘building international relations and supporting constructive ties’?
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Decades of work have been put into building Russia’s financial system. Putin’s war is destroying it overnight.
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Russians could try to use cryptocurrencies to dodge sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine, but a move into the mainstream by crypto exchange heads hungry for fiat currency wealth will complicate evasion tactics.
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In the raging crisis between Russia and Ukraine, fixed income bankers picking over a disrupted new issuance market are finding echoes of the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But they warn that the conflict is only worsening inflation concerns – and that central banks are in a bigger bind than ever.
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For Putin, the threat of expulsion from Swift carries far less weight than it did in 2014. Russia’s own system for transfer of financial messages can now settle domestic transactions, but the move would still trigger a deep recession in the country.
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Russia’s incursion dispels vain hopes of manageable tail risk and heralds a bear market correction.
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Energy price volatility driven by war in Ukraine could deliver a windfall to banks such as Goldman Sachs that retain scale in commodity trading. Profits from dealing can also be made without triggering ESG or sanctions-related pain.
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A year ago, Sber’s stellar profitability looked to be under threat. This year, it has defied the doubters and has just unveiled record net profit for the first nine months of the year.
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Policymakers in Moscow are finally promising to tackle climate change. Will the Russian private sector follow suit?
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Low interest rates, lockdown boredom and super-sophisticated trading apps have lured millions of Russian retail investors into the capital markets over the past year. But will they stay for the long term?
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If the current geopolitical tensions escalate into military action, even the most hardened foreign investors might start looking for an exit from Russia.
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Emerging markets have regained some of the buoyancy lost during the early months of the coronavirus crisis, but analyst opinions hint at the difficulty of identifying which EM currencies investors should favour.
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Russia’s big state bank wants to be the leading player in the country’s fast-growing e-commerce sector. It could succeed.
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The battle for control of Petropavlovsk has been raging since the board and management were unexpectedly voted out at the AGM in June. But only now has it become clear the role a conversion of bonds may have played. At issue are allegations of unequal bondholder treatment.
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Every bank wants to rebrand as a tech player, but few are aiming as high as Sberbank.
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A bank with a profitable core business is a better bet than one designed to lose money.
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While banks have made progress on integrating environmental considerations into areas such as project finance and corporate lending, investment bankers have so far faced few – if any – sustainability-related restrictions on their activities.
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Investors should stop pretending to care about ESG risks.
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A new law prohibiting the return of banks to their former owners will unlock international funding for Ukraine. But is it really the game changer some are claiming?
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Co-founder Sergey Khotimskiy says the coronavirus crisis could help Russia’s private-sector banks fight back against state dominance.
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Recruited to set up a national payments system, the central bank’s Olga Skorobogatova has overseen initiatives to protect consumers and promote competition in Russia’s banking sector. In her first interview with international media, she talks sandboxes, blockchain and the challenges of regulating bank ecosystems.
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Vladimir Verkhoshinskiy says Covid-19 crisis offers opportunities for leading Russian private-sector banks.
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In 2014, a $1 billion bank fraud nearly bankrupted the tiny state. It came through in better shape thanks to reformist policymakers, an IMF bailout and the sale of big banks. But a Russia-leaning administration now threatens to undo those reforms.
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Sustainable financing is gaining ground in corporate Russia as firms look to improve their environmental, social and governance policies ‒ but can the country’s notorious polluters really go green?
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Reformers in Kyiv and Dnipro come under fire as the battle for PrivatBank heats up.
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A deluge of negative transatlantic headlines overshadows the achievements of Ukraine’s reformers.
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The former consumer finance specialist focuses on collateralized lending and sustainable finance ahead of its planned IPO.
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Russia’s leading private sector lender looks to mortgages to maintain pace of loan growth.
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VTB has long lagged state-owned rival Sberbank in terms of profitability, but with sanctions limiting access to capital the pressure is on to close the gap – chairman Andrey Kostin explains why digital transformation and aggressive retail growth hold the key to success for Russia’s second-largest lender.
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A higher score, and tier, in the Euromoney Belt and Road Index shines the spotlight on Russia’s participation this quarter.
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Ukrgasbank is one Ukraine’s largest banks, serving 900,000 retail customers in addition to small and medium-sized enterprises and corporates.
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As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our May CEE focus.
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As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our May CEE focus.
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As part of Euromoney's 50th anniversary coverage, we profile some of the biggest names that we interviewed for our May CEE focus.
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Petr Aven served as minister of foreign economic relations for the Russian Federation between 1991 and 1992. He was president of Alfa-Bank Russia from 1994 to 2011 and is currently chairman of the board, a position he also holds at ABH Holdings, Alfa Group’s financial holding company.
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Viktor Gerashchenko served as chairman of the Gosbank from 1989 to December 1991 and head of the central bank of Russia from 1992 to 1994 and 1998 to 2002. He was chairman of International Bank of Moscow from 1996 to 1998 and Russia’s IMF representative 1998 to 2000. He was elected to the State Duma in 2003.
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New chief executive says ‘smart simplicity’ hold key to success for Russia’s largest privately owned bank.
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Macro and monetary policy factors are affecting some currencies more than traditional commodity triggers.
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Accepting payments from customers in Russia is not always a straightforward process, although interest in the area is growing.
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Handing Ukraine’s largest bank back to its former shareholders would amount to economic suicide – but speculation is rising that leading presidential candidates plan to do just that.
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Fitch sounds the alarm over unsecured consumer lending boom as household incomes stagnate.
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Judge throws out claim in English court; lender on track for first full-year profit since nationalization.
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Two borrowers beat US pressure by tapping into demand with euro and renminbi sales.
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Five years ago it was a niche player specializing in consumer loans for the elderly – today Sovcombank is one of Russia’s largest privately owned banks, with a clutch of new shareholders from China and the Gulf. What lies behind its remarkable rise?
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With new US sanctions looming over Russia and the effects of higher oil prices largely already priced in, will the Russian rouble sink or swim as we approach the end of 2018?
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Investment bankers hope for an autumn thaw after a spring freeze.
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Cryptocurrencies are still not legal in Russia for now, but that isn’t stopping businesses from preparing to take hold of the future.
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Soviet military bunkers in Kazakhstan and portable houses in Siberia linked up to the plumbing: Bitcoin mining is moving in some interesting directions that will become even more diverse as China cracks down on its domestic industry.
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Foreign investors eye record NPL stocks; judicial flaws hinder default resolution.
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New technology and a handful of savvy operators have transformed banking for SMEs in Russia since the start of the decade. Now some of the sector’s biggest names are squaring up for the next challenge: affordable and accessible credit.
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Three years ago, Raiffeisen Bank International was on the casualty list – today it is again one of the best-performing banks in Europe. New chief executive Johann Strobl discusses restructuring, regulation and getting back to ‘real banking’.
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UK court freezes former shareholders’ assets; new CEO appointed by supervisory board.
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A cost-cutting drive and a dearth of deal making at home have made for a turbulent few years at RenCap. But now the Russian economy is recovering, the investment bank is rediscovering its appetite for expansion – at home and abroad.
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Concerns over rising protectionism reducing the trade in goods might be offset by the growing trend for trade in services.
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Tinkoff Mobile targets middle class with premium service; Sberbank offers free package to cut telecoms bill.
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For the banking industry, 2017 was a time of trying finally to resolve issues of the past and avoid new mistakes, yet dig beneath the surface and it was also 12 months of intrigue and, sometimes, farce. Here are Euromoney’s alternative awards for 2017.
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What’s holding up a key appointment for the Ukrainian economy and banking system?
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Primary issuance back to 2013 levels; private-sector names prove popular with investors
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A pair of multibillion-dollar bank bailouts in under a month has roiled Russia’s banking sector and raised questions about the regulator’s competence – Dmitry Tulin, the central bank’s new head of banking supervision, insists such criticism is misguided.
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Anyone trying to keep track of attitudes to cryptocurrencies among Russian policymakers could be forgiven for feeling a trifle dizzy going into December.
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It is almost a year since the forced nationalization of Ukraine’s biggest bank, whose collapse could have wreaked havoc with the country’s economy. It has cost the country $6 billion and sparked a wave of recriminations and lawsuits. As policymakers try to turn PrivatBank into a viable lender, here’s the inside story of a high-stakes national psychodrama.
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Sanctions and regulatory scrutiny stymie sales; western subsidiaries surge back to profit.
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One large bank bailout may be seen as a misfortune; two certainly raise some questions.
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Deposit run sparks Russia’s largest-ever bank rescue; central bank criticized for allowing debt-fuelled expansion spree.
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Roman Lokhov has transformed BCS from a Russian retail broker to a full-service investment bank through a combination of technology, transparency and opportunism. Now he is looking to bring a new generation of Russian companies to the global markets.
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Spreads at multi-year lows as demand remains buoyant; Investors reverse underweight positions.
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Euromoney’s latest Country Risk Survey shows a gradual rebalancing of risk scores this year, as the aftershocks of the global banking and sovereign debt crises wear off, political risks tied to the European electoral cycle fade, and capital access improves for EMs.
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Leading Russian investment bank adds Israel to coverage list; India next target after Essar sell-side mandate wins admirers.
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International investors regain appetite for Russian stocks; Sovcomflot privatization on the table again.
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International banks recently put up an unsecured loan for a Russian borrower with a parent on the US sanctions list. Has the loan market for unsanctioned investment-grade Russian borrowers just got broader, deeper and potentially cheaper?
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Russia’s leading investment bank has seen its fortunes fluctuate over the past two years. Alexei Yakovitsky, VTB Capital’s chief executive, talks to Euromoney about Brexit, Africa and state ownership and explains why sanctions have proved more of a blessing than a curse.
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Matrix Capital to offer fund management, advisory; ‘perfect fit’ for global banks in era of Russia pullback.