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combined share of state banks is a high 66%.
TheCBRwithdrewits400t h bankinglicenselastweekandtheandhasnixed 50 licenses last year alone. In addition the central bank has launched a new facility to rescue big commercial banks that are too large to bail out, taking ownership directly under the central bank in an effort to rehabilitate them and taking the pressure off the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA), which has to reimburse depositors if a bank is closed.
The number banks operating in Russia with a full banking license has fallen to 534 as of the start of May, down from over 1,000 when Nabiullina took over as governor.
The number is approaching 300, which president Vladimir Putin said several years ago is the target to give Russia a banking sector make up similar to that of Germany.
Fitch-rated Russian banks appear able to absorb potential credit losses from their overall limited exposure to individuals and companies targeted by US sanctions announced on 6 April (see Related Research) . The CBR has also provided forbearance, allowing banks not to create extra reserves for these exposures while the government is considering various support options for the affected companies.
The state share of ownership in the banking sector is now over 70%. The Russian central bank reports that the state’s share of banking assets hasn’t increased, even though it has been taking over and closing private lenders for the past year. The CBR analyzed banks by ownership type, but created a separate category for lenders under external management that didn’t exist in previous years. Even though the central bank itself and the state deposit insurance agency took over these allegedly distressed financial institutions, they aren't counted toward the government-owned quota. That allowed the central bank to say that the state-controlled lenders’ share of total assets only increased to 58.5% from 58.3% in 2016. In reality, the distressed banks under state management, which included five of the top-20 Russian banks by assets in 2017, should be added to the government-owned lenders. Then, the government-controlled share of banking assets would rise to 70.7%, the highest in Russia’s post-Soviet history.
State funding increased by RUB916bn in March , which was due to net borrowings of RUB512bn from the CBR, RUB243bn from regional and federal
RUSSIA Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com