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banks can define “high-risk” however they please. The new criterion essentially gives banks a catch phrase to refuse service. Clearly defined criteria and transparent reporting to prevent clients from landing on the list (from which it is difficult to remove oneself) for arbitrary and opaque reasons would actually help,” BMB said in a note.
In 2017, the number of businesses blacklisted by banks increased by 25%— almost every tenth entrepreneur who is a bank client had an account blocked.
CBR governor Elvira Nabiullina recognized the need to mitigate the growth of the blacklist in January. In February, Putin instructed the CBR to remove businesses that have been operating without complaints for several years from the list.
8.1.6 Sberbank news
The net profit of Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank rose 19.7% to 782.2bn rubles in 2018, including events after the reported date, as calculated under Russian Accounting Standards (RAS), the bank said in a statement on March 18. In January, the bank said that its RAS net profit without the events after the reported date rose 24.1% to 811.1bn rubles.
Russia's largest bank state-controlled Sberbank is to finalise the sale of Turkish Denizbank to Emirates NBD in early April, Bloomberg reports citing Turkish newspaper Dunya that provided no further details. Previously the sale of Denizbank has been postponed several times, contributing to the bank's net profit falling short of paying 50% of bottom line in dividends for 2018. Analysts previously estimated that the sale of the bank would add the missing 100bp to Sberbank’s capital adequacy and take it over the 12.5% threshold that would allow the 50% payout. "The pending status of the deal raised concerns over its successful closure," BCS Global Markets commented on March 28, warning that "since the agreement between NBD and Sberbank was signed (May 2018), the Turkish lira has slid by almost 20%, thus the current price in US dollar terms may comprise $2.7bn vs minimum agreed $3.4bn."
63 RUSSIA Country Report April 2019 www.intellinews.com
