Russia

Danske Bank has been forced to close all operations in the Baltics and Russia in response to the largest money-laundering scandal, which has prompted EU authorities to launch an investigation of Danish and Estonian regulators. The bank was given eight months to return customer deposits and transfer its loan contracts to another provider in Estonia, after a report released last autumn revealed the extent of the failures at the bank, the Financial Times reported.

After five years of falling or stagnant incomes, Russian consumers are facing yet more bad news in 2019, Bloomberg News reported. First came the Jan. 1 increase in the value-added tax by two percentage points. A few weeks later, the central bank signaled it could limit one of the key sources battered shoppers have been relying on to keep up their spending: a boom in consumer lending. Real disposable incomes contracted 1.3 percent last month, according to an estimate released by the Federal Statistics Service late Tuesday. The median of 9 economists forecast a decline of 0.9 percent.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman has offered to buy Dia Group in a deal that gives the struggling Spanish supermarket chain an equity value of €417m, a deep discount from its €2.7bn valuation at the end of 2017, the Financial Times reported. Mr Fridman’s holding company, LetterOne, which owns 29 per cent of Dia through its L1 Retail fund, has offered to purchase the rest of the company for €0.67 a share, a premium of 56 per cent to Monday’s closing price. LetterOne bought much of its existing stake early last year, when shares were trading at about €4.

The 2007 takeover of the Dutch parts of Yukos Oil by Russian state oil company Rosneft’s former subsidiary Promneftstroy was illegal, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled on Friday, upholding an earlier lower appeals court ruling. Yukos Oil went bankrupt in 2006 after its former chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, fell out with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian government began demanding billions in back taxes, Reuters reported. Most of Yukos’ assets were absorbed by the Kremlin’s flagship oil producer Rosneft, and its former owners have for years been trying to recover their possessions.

Russian aluminum company Rusal said today that it has appointed independent non-executive director Jean-Pierre Thomas as its new chairman as part of an agreed restructuring in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions, Reuters reported. The previous chairman, Matthias Warnig, stepped down earlier this week after six years at the world’s largest aluminum producer outside China. His resignation was a condition of the deal.Jean-Pierre Thomas was elected by the board as chairman with effect from Jan. 1, Rusal said in a filing to the Hong Kong bourse.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said yesterday that rising protectionism and trade wars and the unpredictability of the U.S. administration have greatly contributed to global oil price volatility over the past two years, Reuters reported. Oil prices have been volatile, falling by more than a third this quarter, partly due to rising oil production in the U.S. “All these uncertainties, which are now on the market: how China will behave, how India will behave... trade wars and unpredictability on the part of the U.S. administration...

VTB, Russia's second biggest bank, plans to focus on organic growth over the next three years after snapping up smaller peers to expand across the country, the bank's First Deputy Chief Executive Dmitry Olyunin said. In the past, VTB has relied on both acquisitions and organic expansion, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. Its biggest deal to date was the ill-fated takeover of Bank of Moscow in 2011, then Russia's fifth biggest bank, where a big portion of bad assets was discovered during the takeover.

Russia’s Sberbank, a key stakeholder in Croatian food producer and retailer Agrokor, has started to receive proposals to sell its share in the firm which is emerging from a debt crisis, an aide to Sberbank’s CEO said. Agrokor, the largest firm in the Balkans with over 50,000 staff, was put under state-run administration last year, crippled by debts built up during an ambitious expansion drive, Reuters reported. In October, a Croatian court approved a deal for the indebted Agrokor that includes a debt-for-equity swap.

Rising geopolitical tensions are increasingly playing out in the global debt markets, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. Russia’s launch this week of the sale of a euro-denominated bond is just the latest example.

A deepening row between Russia and Ukraine ignited by a naval skirmish at the weekend has sparked falls in both countries’ financial markets, the Financial Times reported. Ukraine’s government bonds issued in foreign currency faced significant drops in price, which sent yields rising. Yield on a 10-year dollar-denominated bond maturing in November 2028 jumped 38.7 basis points to 10.832 per cent, its highest level since issuance. A 15-year dollar bond that matures in September 2032 faced a similar rise in yield to 10.385 per cent, also a record high for the paper.