Russia

Russia's biggest lender Sberbank does not believe the indebted Transaero airline could be saved even if it changes owners, RIA news agency quoted Sberbank First Deputy Chief Executive Maxim Poletaev as saying on Thursday. The creditor would not withdraw its lawsuit seeking to declare Transaero bankrupt but was ready for talks with a co-owner of Russia's S7 Airlines who had signed an agreement to buy at least 51 percent of Transaero from its current owner, Poletaev was quoted as saying.

A co-owner of Russia's S7 Airlines, Vladislav Filev, has signed an agreement to buy at least 51 percent of airline Transaero, a spokeswoman for S7 said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Transaero, Russia's second-biggest airline, is laden with debt. Two of its main creditors, Sberbank and Alfa Bank, have filed bankruptcy cases against the airline after it lost out on a lifeline deal with competitor Aeroflot. Read more.

President Vladimir Putin called on the International Monetary Fund to help Ukraine repay a $3 billion bond due December, as Russia said it was weighing plans for a possible default on the debt, Bloomberg News reported. The Washington-based fund is preparing to allow countries supported by a loan program to default on debt to official creditors, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a government meeting with Putin on Tuesday.

The Russian government’s decision to change its plan on Aeroflot PJSC’s takeover of Transaero Airlines sent the shares of the nation’s biggest airline surging, Bloomberg News reported. The Russian government will change its plan on Transaero and its bankruptcy “isn’t ruled out,” First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said in Moscow on Wednesday. Aeroflot’s offer to buy 75 percent plus 1 share of Transaero expired on Tuesday, RIA Novosti reported, citing Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov. A government commission earlier this month backed the takeover of Transaero by Aeroflot.

Russia’s economic crisis has put dozens of banks out of business this year and is threatening many more. But for others, it is turning into a bonanza, Bloomberg News reported. PJSC B&N Bank, founded by Mikhail Gutseriev, the billionaire owner of OAO Russneft, is one of the beneficiaries. In recent months, the company has gobbled up a string of troubled lenders to become one of Russia’s largest private banks. That pace of growth was hard to imagine before U.S.

Russian coal and steel producer Mechel has signed a debt restructuring deal with the country's second-largest state bank, VTB, leaving it one step away from reaching an agreement with all three of its main lenders, Reuters reported. The indebted miner has spent a year in talks over a $6.8-billion debt restructuring with its three main lenders: VTB, Gazprombank and Sberbank. VTB has agreed to restructure Mechel debt worth 70 billion roubles ($1 billion), the bank and the miner said on Wednesday.

For most countries, the economic slowdown in China and the accompanying slump in commodity prices represent something between nuisance and pothole. For Russia, they are a catastrophe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Russia’s currency and economy, already squeezed by Western sanctions, have been sent into virtual free fall by slumping oil prices. The International Monetary Fund predicted in July that Russia’s economy would shrink 3.4% this year, the most of any major emerging market. That now looks optimistic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss “possible mutual steps” to stabilize the global price for oil at a meeting with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in China on Thursday, a Kremlin aide said, as both countries grapple with lower prices for their main export, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Russia’s economy shrank the most since 2009 after a currency crisis jolted consumer demand, while a selloff in oil threatens to drag the country into a deeper recession. Gross domestic product contracted 4.6 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier after a 2.2 percent decline in the previous three months, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said on Monday, citing preliminary data. That was worse than the median forecast for a 4.5 percent slump in a Bloomberg survey of 18 analysts.

Russia is slouching through a recession, and Barvikha Luxury Village — a neatly groomed shopping mall housing brands like Prada and Gucci as well as two car dealerships, Bentley and Ferrari/Maserati — is deserted most days, the International New York Times reported. With the economy reeling from the oil-price crash and Western economic sanctions over Ukraine, the ruble has sunk precipitously, inflation is up sharply and real wages are shrinking for the first time in years, forcing Russians — even the wealthiest — to make do with less. President Vladimir V.