Russia

State-owned Russian Agricultural Bank has filed a lawsuit against JP Morgan in a Moscow court, court files showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The document gave no information on the nature of the claim and neither of the two lenders replied to a request for comment. The court is yet to start processing the lawsuit filed on Nov. 20. Russian Agricultural Bank, the main financial intermediary for Russian food and fertiliser exports, has been hit by Western sanctions and disconnected from the SWIFT international payment system.

Russia's biggest bank Sberbank expects a sharp cooling of the mortgage market following an expected 80% rise in mortgage lending this year, CEO German Gref said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Gref said that the bank's mortgage issuance for the whole of 2023 was expected to reach 4.6 trillion roubles ($50.1 billion). "Despite the fact that we will most likely see a serious cooling in the near future, 2023 can still be called a successful year for the Russian mortgage market," he said at a financial forum in Moscow.

Russia’s Central Bank on Friday raised its key interest rate by two percentage points to 15 percent, a bigger increase than expected as the bank said it was trying to bring down stubbornly high inflation, the New York Times reported. The central bank, which said the annual inflation rate would range from 7 to 7.5 percent this year, predicted a long period of “tight monetary conditions” in order to bring the rate down close to its target of 4 percent.

Russia’s reimposition of capital controls achieved in one go what three interest-rate increases by the central bank couldn’t do for the ruble, Bloomberg News reported. It doesn’t mean policymakers are done hiking. Despite the world’s biggest currency rally over the past month, the Bank of Russia is set on Friday to extend a cycle of monetary tightening that began in July when the pace of the ruble’s depreciation was just picking up. The exchange rate later weakened to levels unseen since the aftermath of last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Russian appeals court has imposed interim measures against Credit Suisse and ruled that funds totalling $20.9 million held by the Swiss bank in Russia may be seized, court filings published on Thursday showed, Reuters reported. Credit Suisse declined to comment. Kaluga-based Russian lender Gazenergobank won its appeal on Oct. 16 against an earlier decision by Moscow's arbitration court, which had opted not to grant interim measures, the filings showed.

Big banks in Britain are preparing for any future escalation of Western sanctions on China and have shared their "scenario planning" with the British and U.S. governments, a senior banking official has told Reuters. The project involves sharing lessons learned from other sanctions frameworks, including those on Russia, and discussions about the effect any measures imposed on China might have, Neil Whiley, director of sanctions at lobby group UK Finance, said.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is exiting Russia by selling its operations there to a new crypto exchange known as CommEX, the Wall Street Journal reported. “As we look toward the future, we recognize that operating in Russia is not compatible with Binance's compliance strategy,” said Noah Perlman, Binance's chief compliance officer. Binance said on Wednesday that "off-boarding" Russian customers would take up to a year. It didn't give financial details of the deal.

Russia’s largest bank is attempting to seize some of Glencore Plc’s Russian assets as compensation for what it says is an unpaid oil trading debt, Bloomberg News reported. Sberbank PJSC is asking a Moscow court for €114.8 million ($123 million) in compensation after its Swiss commodity trading unit sold oil to Glencore but never received payment, according to documents published on the court website. The claim highlights the precariousness of international companies’ assets in Russia since the war in Ukraine triggered several waves of sanctions and retaliatory measures.

Russian policymakers believe the nation’s economy has adapted to the costs of the war on Ukraine and international sanctions and will continue to grow over the next few years, Bloomberg News reported. The Economy Ministry sees Russian gross domestic product slowing to 2.3% over the next two years from 2.8% in 2023, according to its macroeconomic forecast through 2026, which was discussed at a government meeting led by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin Friday and seen by Bloomberg News. GDP growth is expected to further decline to 2.2% in 2026.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is reevaluating its Russian business, including the possibility of a full withdrawal from a once-important market that has turned into a headache, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last week, the Journal reported that Binance was helping Russians move money abroad—despite the company last year saying that it had stopped working in the country, was implementing Western sanctions requirements and had restricted trading on its platform in Russia.