Page 81 - RusRPTAug23

Russia until the end of the year, RBI CEO Johann Strobl said. Raiffeisen earlier announced it intended to spin off its Russian business by September 30 after coming under pressure from European regulators, yet currently it seems unlikely, admitted the head of RBI. RBI reportedly seeks to wait for ECB approval before negotiating with shareholders, which could take several months. Furthermore, Austrian officials are resisting pressure to quit Russia in hopes that the military conflict will soon end.
Russia’s Central Bank has lost its fourth deputy since the invasion of Ukraine as Ksenia Yudaeva said July 27 she was resigning. Along with Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina, Yudaeva has played a key role in transforming the Central Bank into one of Russia’s most effective institutions and managing the economic fallout from the Ukraine war.
From Aug. 1, Yudaeva will be an adviser to Nabiullina. She will remain a member of the Central Bank's Executive Board and the Financial Stability Committee.
Yudaeva became deputy head of the Central Bank in 2013 shortly after Nabiullina was appointed chairwoman by Putin. Initially, Yudaeva was responsible for monetary policy and inflation targeting. In recent years, she has overseen financial stability and analytics.
A prominent economist who received her Phd from MIT in the United States, Yudaeva was widely seen as a technocrat with liberal views. However, like her boss Nabiullina, she remained in post following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prior to joining the Central Bank, Yudaeva was in charge of state-owned Sberbank's macroeconomic research center. She was sanctioned by the U.S. last year for her affiliation with bailed-out lender Otkritie Bank.
The European Central Bank is unhappy that lenders from the region are slow to shrink or exit units in the Russian market and urged banks to speed up the process, Bloomberg reported. Andrea Enria, who leads the ECB's Supervisory Board, wrote in a letter to members of the European Parliament that he was concerned "about the disappointingly slow progress made by banks" and urged them to "speed-up their downsizing and exit strategies." Banks overseen by the ECB cut their Russia exposures by just 37% last year, Enria said. EU banks have about €45bn of total exposure to Russia as of Q4 2023, about half of which accounted for Raiffeisen Bank, according to the publication.
The Swiss bank UBS will close most of the accounts of Russians inherited after the takeover of Credit Suisse, writes the Swiss NZZ Magazin. In total, UBS will get rid of 50-75% of its "legacy" customer base due to non-compliance with its risk criteria. Up to 75% of Credit Suisse's Russian clients are forced to leave the bank after being bought by another Swiss bank, UBS, NZZ am Sonntag claims, citing unnamed sources. More conservative
81 RUSSIA Country Report August 2023 www.intellinews.com