Page 9 - Buy Russia - bne IntelliNews monthly magazine April 2017

bne April 2017 The Month That Was I 9
Finance
Central Europe
CEE lender Erste Group reported record net profits of €1.265bn in 2016, a rise of 31% on the previous year.
The Austrian banking group proposed doubling its dividend to €1 a share for the year.
The European Commission announced on March 8 that it will hand Slovakia support of €147.6mn towards the con- struction of a stretch of motorway. The 4.3km stretch of the D3 is part of the Zilina bypass and part of a transport link between the D1 motorway and Poland.
Southeast Europe
Investigative journalists say they
have traced the flow of up to $80bn siphoned off in Russia with the involvement of the Moldovan judi- ciary to offshore firms between 2011 and 2014. Moldovan prosecutors have indicted four former central bank officials suspected of helping to launder $22bn through Moldova’s second largest bank Moldinconbank.
Bosnia & Herzegovina will not be allowed to participate in Eurovision this year due to public broadcaster BHRT’s outstanding debts to the Euro- pean Broadcasting Union. The financial situation of BHRT had been deteriorat- ing for years.
been involved in currency transactions involving significant proceeds from drug trafficking.
Eastern Europe
Valeriya Gontareva, the governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, has said she may resign after the next memo- randum under the country’s $17.5bn support programme from the Interna- tional Monetary Fund has been signed and sealed, clearing the way for further disbursements of cash to Kyiv.
currency rating and ‘BBB-/A-3’ local currency rating. This is the first improve- ment of Russia’s outlook to positive by any of the big three rating agencies.
Capital flight from Russia finally reversed in January, with the first posi- tive inflows of $2.4bn coming for the first time since the third quarter of 2015. Capital flight has been falling steadily from the peaks of $154bn in 2014 and $133bn in 2008, as Russian companies deleverage and pay down international debt.
Eurasia
Kazakhstan's second largest lender Halyk Bank and larger rival Kazkom- mertsbank (KKB) are to merge with the government to support the deal by helping KKB get rid of bad loans. Crit- ics noted the merger would mean over one-third of the Kazakh banking sector would be controlled by one bank whose owners are presidential family members. A full merger would create a bank with assets of $27bn.
The Moscow Commercial Court has granted a petition by Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank demanding that it uphold in Russia a ruling of London’s High Court of Justice ordering the collection of $420mn from the bank’s ex-chairman, Mukhtar Ablyazov. The Kazakh tycoon, who is now in France after fleeing over charges he embezzled BTA funds, alleg- edly stole pension assets and personal savings as well as loans received from foreign financial institutions, causing damages estimated to total $7.5bn.
The Central Bank of Russia reduced the key lending rate by 0.25 percent- age points to 9.75% on March 24, despite broad market expectations of no change this month.
Net IFRS profit of Russia's largest bank, state-controlled Sberbank, surged 2.4-fold year-on-year to a record-high RUB541.9bn (€87.8mn)
in 2016. In the fourth quarter alone, Sberbank made RUB141.8bn, doubling year-on-year and inching up 3.5% quarter-on-quarter.
The US department of state included
Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Serbia in its list of major money-laun- dering countries. Financial institutions from the three countries have allegedly
S&P improved the outlook on Russia’s sovereign ratings from Stable to Posi- tive, while affirming the ‘BB+/B’ foreign
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