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.