Page 7 - bne_Magazine_February_2019

bne February 2019 The Month That Was I 7
Finance
Eastern Europe
The completion of the merger between troubled Financial Corporation Otkri- tie and Binbank (aka B&N Bank), both of which were taken over by the Russian regu- lator last year, has created a top five Russian by bank with RUB315bn ($4.7bn) in capital, Vedomosti reported on January 10.
Russian daily calculated which invest- ments paid out the most in 2018 and the winner was the stocks and bonds of Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema that returned 128% and 55% respectively, Vedomosti reported on January 8. Dollar denominated bank deposits were second returning 23% in ruble terms.
The government of Belarus plans to raise $1.5bn on foreign capital markets in 2019, Finance Minister Maxim Yermolovich said in an interview with the ONT television channel on January 7. However, the strategy for entering the market of foreign borrowing "potentially may change," given the tax manoeuvre being implemented in Russia.
The European Bank for Reconstruc- tion and Development (EBRD) says it intends to buy out the state share in Belarus’s leading commercial bank Priorbank in the first quarter of this year. Currently the bank is majority owned by Austrian bank Raiffeisen International.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has filed a claim with the Tribunal de Premiere Instance in Geneva against Ihor Kolomoisky, ex-shareholder of the country's largest lender PrivatBank, nationalised in late 2016, the regulator said in a statement on December 19.
The board of Ukraine’s main donor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signed off on the badly needed $3.9bn Stand by agreement (SBA) at a meeting on December 18. The approval of the deal clears the way for the release of the next tranche of cash worth $1.4bn that Ukraine needs to clear its debt obli- gations for this year.
Russia's Promsvyazbank (PSB) will be allowed by the government not to disclose the information on its beneficiaries in full or partially, while other banking and credit institutions are obliged to disclose this informa- tion, Kommersant daily reported on December 18.
France has decided to extend the state guarantees for Yamal LNG project of Russia's LNG runner-up Novatek, Kom- mersant daily reported citing the French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire. Reportedly, this deal for Yamal LNG might reduce the credit burden for Novatek and accelerate the launch of Arctic LNG-2, the next LNG project of the company.
Russia's venture capital market is expected to decuple in size to RUB2.7 trillion ($40bn) by 2030, according to the joint strategy of the Russian Venture Company (RVC) and the Ministry of Economic Development, Vedomosti daily said on December 19.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has terminated the banking license of Ukrainian operations of Russia's state- owned VTB Bank, which went bank- rupt in late November following weeks of a snowballing liquidity crisis, accord-
ing to the nation's Individuals Deposit Guarantee Fund (IDGF).
Ukraine’s Finance Ministry raised UAH11.4bn ($412mn) and $309mn at its weekly bond auction on December 18, which is the second highest weekly auc- tion result since the beginning of the year after the equivalent of UAH20.3bn was raised in March. More than half of auction receipts – UAH11.3bn – came from the sale of four UAH-denominated bonds
with maturity ranging from 77 to 105 days. To attract bidders, the government hiked the interest rates of these bonds to 20.5% from 19% at previous auctions.
Central Europe
Hungary sold RMB2bn (€256mn) in panda bonds targeted at the domes-
tic Chinese market, which winds up
the issue of a RMB3bn panda bond programme. Hungary was amongst the first foreign issuers to tap the onshore and offshore markets for yuan bonds, launching its first RMB1bn yuan-denom- inated bond issue in July 2017.
Southeast Europe
The Macedonian bourse started trad- ing with state securities with a nomi- nal value of MKD54.2bn (€881.3mn). The aim is for the state securities to become available to a larger number of foreign and domestic investors, while the increased demand is expected to contribute to reducing interest rates.
Eurasia
Uzbekistan plans to attract $4.1bn of foreign direct investment by 2022, up from $1.67bn in 2018, according to the country's finance ministry. Central Asia's most populous nation has in the past two years been opening up to foreign investors by carrying out reforms.
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