As reported, Raiffeisenbank International (RBI) has now stepped up its efforts to withdraw from operations in Russia. The focus is on transactions leading to an exit, RBI chief Johann Strobl said Thursday at the bank’s general meeting in Vienna. There are two options: sale or spin-off. However, financial experts rate both options as “relatively unrealistic”.
“The current options for an exit are very limited, so that RBI currently has no option to leave Russia and will remain there and, in consultation with the ECB, further scale down its activities there,” said Florian Beckermann, board member of the interest group. group for investors (IVA), on Friday to the Ö1 “Morgenjournal”.
For example, a possible buyer of the RBI-Russia business could be a Chinese or Indian bank that has good relations with the Kremlin, said Mario Holzner, director of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Comparisons (wiiw), in the “Morgenjournal”. However, according to experts, the value of the company is estimated by a commission from the Russian government and the buyer is only allowed to pay 50 percent of it to the seller. According to Holzner, there are also ten percent that should be transferred directly to the Russian state. In any case, there is no question of a rapid withdrawal of the RBI from Russia. “So there is certainly nothing to do before the end of the year.”
RBI serves as a bridge to other Western banks
Therefore, RBI now has to make credible that sales in Russia will continue to decline. In the past year, she has already reduced about 30 percent of the loans to Russian institutions and companies in Russia. In itself, the company is very profitable there, the profit in Russia would have accounted for about 60 percent of the RBI group. “Meanwhile, all of the larger European and US companies that are still in place are largely conducting their transfers to the West via RBI using the Swift system,” says Holzner.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
