Page 11 - bneMag Dec22

bne December 2022 Companies & Markets I 11
Former employees of VTB and Sberbank in London have been struggling to find work due to the perceived stigma of having worked for Russian state entities, which have been supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine.
A former banker at VTB Capital, who spent more than three years working in its London office, said he was forced to abandon his career in the city.
“Nobody is hiring anyone who worked at VTB or Sber and the headhunters wouldn’t return my calls,” the banker told bne IntelliNews, asking for his name to be withheld. “Rightly and wrongly, we are pariahs and outcasts in the city for having worked for a financial institution with a direct line to a raving megalomaniac in the Kremlin.”
Three small Southeast European economies are outperforming Emerging Europe
bne IntelliNews
The latest set of forecasts from the European Commission confirmed what other international financial institutions (IFIs) had recently predicted: three small Southeast European countries are set to outperform the rest of the Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe region this year.
Croatia and Slovenia have shown themselves to be relatively resilient to the current crisis so far – though slowdowns loom. Montenegro, meanwhile, is continuing its recovery from the coronacrisis after its tourism-dependent economy suffered the worst contraction across the Emerging Europe region in 2020.
The European Commission autumn forecasts, released on November 11, project growth of 6.2% for Slovenia, 6.0% for Croatia and 7.0% for Montenegro this year, which were the highest for the eastern EU members and candidate countries included in the report.
Earlier forecasts from September and October from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank also put the three countries ahead of the rest of Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe for 2022.
In the broader Emerging Europe and Central Asia region, only some of the fast-growing Eurasian economies are set to see stronger growth rates this year.
Moving into next year, however, Croatia and Slovenia are already experiencing a sharp slowdown and growth is anticipated to be just 1.0% in the former and 0.8% in the latter. Montenegro will fare somewhat better, along with the other Western Balkan economies, with growth projected at 2.9%.
Resilient to the energy crisis
Croatia’s strong performance so far has been down to a combination of its relative resilience to the energy crisis, thanks to a large extent to its construction of the offshore
floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) terminal on the island of Krk, and partly to the continued post-Covid rebound of its tourism sector.
“Croatia is relatively protected from the Russian gas import shutdown, given its majority state-owned energy sector, adequate share of renewables and access to alternatives through the Krk LNG terminal,” commented the EBRD.
The FLNG terminal contributes to Croatia’s energy independence, and the country has ambitions to become an LNG hub for the region. Zagreb intends to double the capacity of the terminal from 2.9bn cubic metres to 6.1 bcm, Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said in June.
At the same time, both exports and private sector consumption are also going strong, driving growth in the country.
The EC noted “strong, broad-based growth” on the back of a positive first half of the year. “Booming goods exports and a recovery of tourism and close contact services, together with employment growth, supported household consumption, while both public and private investment picked up,” said the report.
European Comission GDP growth forecasts 2022
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