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In May the bank said that it was “moving ahead with divesting its Russian
assets” and handing them over to its shareholders, but little has happened
since then. As covered in detail by
heavy regulatory pressure to come up with an exit plan from Russia, the
country where it made 60% of its net profit last year.
In February the bank was grilled by the US Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over its business activities related to Russia,
but no sanctions have been imposed yet as its exit is complicated by decree
issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin that prevents banks from
“unfriendly” countries to exit Russia without special permission from the
Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Dozens of foreign banks have been trapped in
Russia by this decree, including
The only bank that managed to quickly pull out of Russia following the
full-scale military invasion of Ukraine was France's Société Générale, which
sold its fully-owned Rosbank to oligarch Vladimir Potanin.
Part of the problem is that RBI has a significant pile of cash worth €400mn
trapped in Russia it is reluctant to leave behind. According to the bank’s
statements, it is attempting to separate its Russian business into a separate
legal entity and at the same time has proposed
The British oil major BP announced it was withdrawing from Russia very
soon after the war started, but it continues to own 19.75% of Russia’s biggest
oil company Rosneft and has not announced any plans to sell the stake, which
it acquired after Rosneft took over the TNK-BP joint venture in
2012 in a deal worth $55bn.
BP18.7bn hit by writing off the shareholding from its books despite
the fact that the company technically still owns the shares. Russia has been
the company's main source of crude oil for the last two decades and
responsible for the majority of the company’s profits.
Sechin called BP a “ghost shareholder” at a conference
last September and called on the company to return to its “native bosom”. BP
has broken off contacts and cooperation with Rosneft, but Sechin said at
another conference in December that BP remains a partner and the Russian
oil company deposited GBP580mn ($713mn) of dividend payments into its
Russian bank account – the equivalent of a third of the UK government’s direct
financial aid to Ukraine in 2022 alone. It is not clear if BP has access to this
money or has any intention of using it.
BP has not commented on its attempts to sell the stake, which will be difficult,
as it is regarded as a strategically important asset by the Kremlin, which would
need to give special permission for any deal to go through. The partnership
with Rosneft has brought the company a total of $4.6bn in dividends since
2013 as of the end of last year.
bne IntelliNews, RBI came under
Italy's UniCredit and Citi of the US.
a controversial swap of its loans for those of Russia’s Sberbank that are trapped in Europe by sanctions
to rescue its money.
BP
BP took a G
Rosneft’s CEO Igor
17 RUSSIA Country Report July 2023 www.intellinews.com