The Austrian Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) will try to sell its Russian division (Raiffeisenbank) or remove it from the group structure, the RBI said.
“To maintain the license, we will continue some banking activities in the Russian Federation. We simply cannot finish all operations immediately. We will strive for a possible sale or spin-off of the Russian business,” RBI chief executive Johann Strobl was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Strobl also said that RBI had received an offer for a possible asset swap from Sberbank Europe.
In mid-March, it emerged that RBI’s top management discussed a possible asset swap in Russia with Sberbank. Sberbank’s European business is frozen and RBI is unable to receive dividends from the Russian subsidiary. A possible agreement would allow the parties to compensate these losses.
The RBI added that the group will continue to work on possible deals to deconsolidate Raiffeisenbank and the parent structure. At the same time, the structure in the Russian Federation will continue to carry out banking operations under the terms of the license of the Central Bank.
It is also reported that RBI will continue to reduce trading activity in Russia. In fact, this process is expressed in the reduction by Raiffeisenbank of the total volume of operations in foreign currency, as well as a decrease in the rate of issuance of loans.
Author:
anastasia mariana
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
