Page 7 - bne Newspaper 170317

The Regions This Week
March 17, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 7
Eastern Europe
Russian authorities signalled a new attempt
to crack down on rampant corruption in the country, starting with the embezzlement of state funds. The number of corruption crimes revealed last year by the interior ministry’s economic secu- rity and anti-corruption department rose by 21%, with identified damage at RUB43bn (€40.4bn), the department said.
The EU decided to extend some of its Rus-
sia sanctions by six months. The sanctions are against citizens of Ukraine and Russia deemed to be undermining or threatening the territorial in- tegrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
A new tranche from the IMF under the mul- tinational lender’s $17.5bn support pro- gramme agreed in 2015 will arrive within ten days, Ukrainian Finance Minister Olek- sandr Danylyuk said on March 16. Accord- ing to the official, the executive board of the IMF, Ukraine’s main creditor, will consider the programme’s review on March 20.
Roman Nasirov, the suspended head of Ukraine’s State Fiscal Service (SFS) who is under investi- gation for corruption activities related to illegal natural gas sales schemes, was released from custody in Kyiv late on March 16 after his wife posted the UAH100mn (€3.5mn) bail – an eye wa- tering sum for a bureaucrat.
Ukraine’s economic growth will lose 1.25-1.3pp in 2017 due to a blockade of the Donbas region imposed by the Kyiv authorities, Finance Minister Oleksandr Danylyuk predicted.
Russian metals major Norilsk Nickel last year increased net IFRS profit by 47% year-on-year to $2.53bn. Revenues grew 3% y/y to $8.26bn, with Ebitda down by 9% y/y to $3.9bn. The Ebitda mar- gin, however, remained high at 47% versus 50% seen in 2015. In a decision likely to be welcomed by the market, the company said it intends to distrib- ute 60% of Ebitda to shareholders. For January-
September 2016 Norilsk Nickel already paid inter- mediate dividends of $1.2bn or $7.4 per share.
Russian real estate developer PIK Group will del- ist its global depositary receipts (GDRs) from the London Stock Exchange to consolidate trade in its shares on the Moscow Exchange, the company said in a statement posted on its website on March 13.
Russian state maritime shipping company Sov- comflot could be privatised in the first half of 2017, Reuters quoted Minister of Economic Devel- opment Maxim Oreshkin as saying on March 15. The privatisation of Sovcomflot is planned to raise RUB30bn (€470mn) by selling a stake of 25% minus one share in the company. However, the government has scaled back the original privati- sation programme for 2017-2019.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) continues to gradually ease capital controls in the country, with the regulator now relaxing restrictions imposed on some FX purchase transactions, the central bank said. The NBU imposed capital controls in 2014, when the currency and economy went into meltdown, and is able to ease now the situation has stabilised.
Ukraine’s nationalised PrivatBank has asked the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to provide addi- tional recapitalisation, the central bank’s gover- nor Valeriya Gontareva said at a financial confer- ence, without providing any sum. In February, the Ukrainian Finance Ministry announced its plans to buy government domestic bonds worth UAH9.8bn (€345mn) to complete re-capitalisation of nation- alised PrivatBank totalling UAH116.8bn (€4.1bn).
The volume of M&A deals in Ukraine increased by 20% in 2016 to €605.3mn, while their total number decreased by 2.6 times to 54, according to a report published by CMS law firm. The largest transac- tions of year included a deal on the acquisition
of 99.9% in the Kyiv-headquartered Ukrsotsbank controlled by Italian banking group UniCredit Group (UCG) by Cyprus-registered ABH Holdings S.A.