bne_newspaper_April_5_2019

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Content:
2 Top Stories
6 The Regions This Week 9 Chart
10 bne Invest
14 Central Europe 16 Southeast Europe 18 Eastern Europe 22 Eurasia
23 Opinion
25 bne Tech
April 5, 2019 www.intellinews.com
Foreign investors bought just over half of all Russia's OFZ bonds issued in 1Q19
Ben Aris in Berlin
Investor sentiment towards Russia’s ruble de- nominated domestic OFZ treasury bills has done a sharp about face in the first months of this year.
At the start of 2018 most bond traders were overweight the OFZ as thanks to its high yield and extremely low risk. As bne IntelliNews
Cash pile of Russian Surgut oil dinosaur grows to sovereign proportions
Vadim Dumes in Paris
The famous cash pile of leading Russian privately owned oil company Surgutneftegaz (Surgut) has grown so big that it is now almost as large as Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.
Surgut reported its Russian Accounted Standards (RAS) results for 2018, under which the compa- ny's notorious cash pile increased by 32% in
2018 to RUB3 trillion ($45bn) – a new record for
reported this week Russia can now cover its external debt dollar for dollar in cash, yet the OFZ pay a coupon for between 8% and 9% in a world of near zero interest rates.
See page 2
Russian oil company Surgutneftegaz has more than $40bn in cash reserves, almost as much as the National Welfare sovereign reserve fund.
the company and the most it has had in reserve since 2013.
The size of the company’s cash reserves are now only RUB900bn less than the entire country's National Welfare Fund (NWF) which stood at RUB3.9 trillion ($58.5bn) as of March 1 2019.
See page 4