Page 69 - RusRPTNov18

to support a 50% dividend payout.
Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank has shrugged off concerns about both Brexit and sanctions by committing £80mn ($104mn) in the second half of this year to its loss-making London investment bank, bne IntelliNews can reveal. Annual filings made by the bank on September 28 with UK Companies House shows that £80mn was injected by the parent in a move, which doubles the capital of the London unit of Sberbank CIB. The investment is easily the largest by Sberbank into its UK business and follows an injection of £40mn made in February this year and smaller amounts worth £5.5mn and £3mn made by the parent last year.
From 22 October, Sberbank is to raise mortgage rates 40bp, to a minimum of 9.2% for the secondary market and 7.5% for the primary market. Sberbank represents almost half of the new mortgage market and its decision follows the recently announced hikes by other industry participants, including Dom.RF. The blended rate for new mortgages hit a record low of 9.42% in August 2018 and rebounded to 9.5% in September. The declining rates became a notable driver for sales by public homebuilders in 3Q18: they saw credit transactions representing 41-65% of total volumes. This was, in our view, supported by clients’ perception of a bottom in mortgage rates, improving real incomes and concerns over the supply of real estate after the implementation of the escrow accounts schemes.
Russia's major banks, including the largest lender state-controlled Sberbank, have started to increase interest rates on consumer loans, Vedomosti d aily reported citing the report by MARCS marketing agency. Coupled with lower outlook on real disposable income and worse inflation forecast , making consumer loans more expensive will undermine demand and slow down economic growth in the short-term . Reportedly in the first half of October five of the top 25 banks have hike the interest on some consumer loans. Sberbank increased the minimum rate for consumer loans by 1-2.2pp to 12.9% for salaried clients and pensioners and to 13.9% for other clients. The refinancing rates for consumer loans increased from 11.5-12.5% to 12.9-13.9%. Other banks that increased their rates for consumer loans include Citibank, Renaissance Capital, Home Credit, and Postal Bank.
Russia's major state-owned lender Sberbank will seek a new buyer for its Ukrainian subsidiary after the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has refused permission for the second time to the small Minsk-headquartered state-owned lender Paritetbank that wants to buy it. "I think that we will have to look for a new buyer, because the NBU very clearly said that the buyer from Belarus is undesirable for them," Interfax quoted Sberbank first deputy head Lev Khasis as saying on the sidelines of the Finopolis 2018 Forum in Sochi on October 18. "They [the Ukrainian regulator] refused because they consider the Belarusian buyer insufficiently 'reputable' to approve the deal," he said, adding that the Ukrainian unit "is continuing to operate in Ukraine and continues to comply with all regulations". According to bne IntelliNews ' correspondent in Minsk, Paritetbank has changed its owners between the two bids, and is now owned by the nation's State Property Fund instead of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s administrative affairs department. In March, the NBU attributed its rejection of the first bid by Paritetbank to "the incompatibility of the applicant with the requirements of the legislation of Ukraine," the NBU said in a statement on March 27, without elaborating. In late 2017, Paritetbank said that it "highly assesses the potential of [Ukraine's] Sberbank in the context of the
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