Oil tanker tycoons are enjoying a surge in revenue as the sanctions triggered by Russia’s war are redrawing the global trade in crude. And it’s set to last, Bloomberg News reported. The disruption is fairly simple. Europe, for decades the top buyer of Russian oil, is banning purchases from Moscow next month and has already been cutting back. Those cargoes are instead flowing out to Asia. The result is ships sailing thousands of miles further, driving up a vital aspect of demand.
Read more
President Vladimir Putin urged the Russian government on Wednesday to control car prices, as one industry head said Western sanctions could send annual sales crashing to below 1 million for the first time since records began, Reuters reported. Auto sales have fallen over 60% so far this year, and may end up being less than a quarter of what they were a decade ago, according to Maxim Sokolov, head of Russia's top carmaker Avtovaz.
Russia will allow Belarus to postpone debt payments totalling $1.4 billion for 10 years, while also setting a fixed interest rate, according to draft laws approved by Russian lower house of parliament, or Duma, on Tuesday, Reuters reported. At the start of the year, Belarus has asked Russia to restructure and refinance Minsk's 2022 debt obligations and Moscow would move all payments, redemptions and debt servicing due between March 2022 and April 2023 to 2028-2033, Timur Maksimov, Russian deputy finance minister, told Duma.
Read more
On Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, the Russian government moved forward by presidential decree to disenfranchise the owners of the Sakhalin-1 energy project, including the foreign nationals of several countries that the Russian government designated as "unfriendly countries," Mondaq reported. Russia has applied the "unfriendly country" designation to any country, including the U.S., that has joined in international sanctions against Russia.
Energy giant Uniper posted a net loss of around $39.3 billion for the first nine months of the year—one of the biggest in Germany’s corporate history—highlighting the financial fallout from Russia’s decision to throttle natural-gas deliveries to Europe, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, which is soon to be nationalized by Germany in an attempt to stabilize it and protect its customers, said Thursday it was finalizing the details of additional state-support measures.
Read more
The three countries that helped Moscow to maintain crude exports in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine appear to be stepping back into the market for Russian barrels, with Turkey taking a lead role in the latest buying, Bloomberg News reported. A marked increase in the volume of crude on tankers that have yet to signal a final destination makes the task of monitoring Russia’s exports more complicated, but most of those vessels end up in India, with a smaller number heading further east to China.
Read more
Defaults among emerging market companies continued to pile up in the third quarter due to troubles in Russia as well as China's property sector, with the volume of bonds trading at distressed levels close to record highs, JPMorgan said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The year-to-date default rate for emerging market high-yield firms reached 10.3%, the bank found in its latest default monitor. This was driven by Russian defaults lifting the rate in emerging Europe to 21.7%, while China's property sector woes saw the default rate across Asia run to 12.8%.
Read more
Economic activity in Russia slowed significantly at the end of September, Bank of Russia Deputy Governor Alexei Zabotkin told lawmakers on Tuesday, but payments to mobilised troops should cushion the negative effect on consumer demand, Reuters reported. President Vladimir Putin announced on Sept. 21 that 300,000 people would be mobilised to boost Russia's efforts in what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, but details of the economic impact have so far been thin on the ground.
Read more
The commercial hub of Delaware is blocking startup ventures with past ties to Russia from maintaining their corporate standing in the state, ensnaring some tech firms that say they have little or no current connection to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported.
Read more
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed on Wednesday a new package of Russia sanctions, designed "to make the Kremlin pay" for escalating the conflict in Ukraine with what she called "sham" votes in occupied territory, Reuters reported. "We do not accept the sham referenda and any kind of annexation in Ukraine, and we are determined to make the Kremlin pay for this further escalation," she told reporters in Brussels.
Read more