Aurelia Butler

Sberbank Europe AG, which had total assets of 13.64 billion euros ($15.3 billion) at the end of last year, along with its Croatian and Slovenian units, suffered a rapid deposit outflow in recent days and is likely to fail to pay its debts or other liabilities, the ECB said.Europe’s Single Resolution Board has enforced a payment moratoria at the three banks and will now assess whether it was in the public interest to save the lenders.”Sberbank Europe AG and its subsidiaries experienced significant deposit outflows as a result of the reputational impact of geopolitical tensions,” the ECB said in a statement.”This led to a deterioration of its liquidity position,” the ECB added. “There are no available measures with a realistic chance of restoring this position at group level and in each of its subsidiaries within the banking union.”Sberbank Europe AG also has subsidiaries outside the Europe’s banking union, including in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. As these fall outside the ECB’s jurisdiction, the bank has contacted local supervisors.Retail depositors are protected up to 100,000 euros per bank in the European Union.($1= 0.8940 euros) More

The rouble had stood around 83.89 late on Friday. Dealers said liquidity was non-existent with nobody wanting to make a price in the currency so all rates were merely indicative. On Reuters dealing the rouble was quoted at 98.00, while EBS showed it at 100.00. One trader at an Australian bank said the indicated range so far this morning was between 86.05-100.00. More

Norway’s $1.3tn oil fund will dump its Russian investments as part of a wider package of support for Ukraine, highlighting how the international financial pressure on Moscow is being ratcheted up. Norges Bank Investment Management, the sovereign wealth fund housed inside Norway’s central bank, has been instructed to immediately freeze all new investments in Russia and to begin to unwind its existing $3bn worth of Russian holdings, according to a statement from the Norwegian government on Sunday evening.“Russia’s attack on Ukraine has challenged Europe’s security in a way we have not seen since the second world war,” said Jonas Gahr Støre, Norway’s prime minister. “It challenges our norms, our values and the principles that our democratic society is based on.” The fund — the world’s largest sovereign wealth investor — held NKr27bn ($3.1bn) in shares in the country at the end of 2021, according to a spokesperson. That equates to 0.2 per cent of NBIM’s total of assets under management.“We will implement the decisions made by the Norwegian government and now freeze the fund’s investments in Russia, meaning we will neither buy nor sell shares,” NBIM said in a statement to the Financial Times. “Together with the ministry of finance, we will prepare a plan to divest from the Russian market.”Nicolai Tangen, the state fund’s chief executive and a former hedge fund manager, had earlier this week indicated that he thought divesting from Russia altogether was a bad idea. “This is obviously a dilemma, but selling out of a market is not black-or-white,” he told a local newspaper. “The Moscow stock exchange has fallen markedly in recent days, and if we sell our stocks now, Russian oligarchs would be able to buy these on the cheap.” Norway has long stressed that the sovereign wealth fund is a non-political, long-term investor, but increasing pressure on the government to act more forcefully in response to the Ukrainian invasion pushed the government to act. “Given how the situation has developed, we consider it necessary to pull the fund out of Russia,” Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, the Norwegian finance minister, said in a statement. The government also said it would allocate up to two billion kroner for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and will also provide military equipment such as helmets and protective vests. Norway has so far given 250mn kroner in humanitarian aid as a result of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, it said, mainly to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross and the UN Humanitarian Land Fund.“Russia’s acts of war lead to great civilian casualties, destroy basic infrastructure and drive people into exile. We are therefore increasing our humanitarian aid in connection with the Ukraine crisis,” said Gahr Støre.Norway said that sanctions will also isolate Russia financially “by hitting the central bank and taking a number of Russian banks out of the Swift payment system”. Norwegian airspace will also be closed to Russian flights. More

GENEVA (Reuters) -Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said on Sunday that it was “very probable” that neutral Switzerland would follow the European Union (EU) on Monday in sanctioning Russia and freezing Russian assets in the Alpine country.Cassis, interviewed on French-language Swiss public television RTS, said that the seven-member Federal Council would meet on Monday and review recommendations by the departments of finance and economy.Asked whether Switzerland — a major financial centre and commodities trading hub — would follow the EU in freezing Russian assets, he said: “It is very probable that the government will decide to do so tomorrow, but I cannot anticipate decisions not yet taken.”Cassis said that Switzerland’s neutrality must be preserved and it stood ready to offer its good offices for diplomacy if talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the Belarusian border do not succeed, for example by reaching an armistice.”That does not prevent us from calling a spade a spade,” he said.Switzerland has walked a tortuous line between showing solidarity with the West and maintaining its traditional neutrality that the government says could make it a potential mediator.But it faces growing pressure to side clearly with the West against Moscow and adopt punitive European Union sanctions. The government had so far said only that it will not let Switzerland be used as a platform to circumvent EU sanctions. In the biggest peace march in decades, around 20,000 people demonstrated in the capital Bern on Saturday to support Ukraine, some booing the government over its cautious policy. Cassis said on Sunday that Ukrainians fleeing the conflict would be welcome “for a transitional period, which we hope will be as short a possible”.Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said separately that Switzerland was ready to take in those who need protection and also to support the neighbouring countries affected. “We will not leave people in the lurch,” she said.The Swiss government last week amended its watchlist to include 363 individuals and four companies that the EU had put on its sanctions list to punish Moscow.Russians held nearly 10.4 billion Swiss francs ($11.24 billion) in Switzerland in 2020, Swiss National Bank data show. ($1 = 0.9252 Swiss francs) More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – World Bank President David Malpass said on Sunday the bank may be able to provide Ukraine with more financial resources within days and that additional aid for the war-torn country will be discussed by G7 finance leaders on Tuesday.Malpass told CBS’ “Face the Nation” he was not yet considering what would happen if the Ukraine’s government falls, but the bank is “doing everything we can to support the people of Ukraine.””Right now, we have an instrument that is able to move quickly in the next few days if it’s – if it’s needed – and the circumstances go that way,” Malpass said. “I briefed our board on Thursday and it can be added to by other countries that want to support Ukraine.”A disbursement for Ukraine within days would represent a rapid acceleration from World Bank financing options that Malpass discussed a week ago with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Malpass at that time said the bank was readying a $350 million disbursement to Ukraine that the group’s board would consider by the end of March.Malpass said he would join a virtual meeting on Tuesday of finance ministers and central bank governors from the G7 Western democracies, who will discuss other options and “can decide a lot of how much aid goes into Ukraine.”A source familiar with the G7 meeting plans said the finance leaders also will discuss the latest rounds of sanctions against Russia aimed at punishing Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. These include moves by the United States and its allies to cut key Russian banks off from the SWIFT financial transactions messaging system and impose sanctions against Russia’s central bank aimed at neutralizing its $630 billion in foreign currency reserves.Malpass also said the World Bank, along with the International Monetary Fund, was considering steps to help countries bordering Ukraine to support their intake of Ukrainian refugees, such as Romania and Moldova.He added that the conflict and financial sanctions against Russia would increase hardship for the Russian people as the rouble’s value has fallen dramatically.”You know, this is a tragedy right now for Ukrainians, for the neighbors of Ukraine, but also for Russians,” he said. “They didn’t choose war.” More

British businesses are sceptical that the government and EU will resolve problems at the UK border and instead believe it will fall to them to reduce costly delays, according to a survey.ClearBorder, a training consultancy, surveyed 150 mostly small companies and found that only a third of respondents were “very or somewhat confident” in the government’s ability to improve import and export procedures. But there were higher levels of faith in suppliers and the logistics industry. The report comes after the introduction of new Brexit customs checks on January 1 on goods entering the UK from the EU. Some companies have complained that the additional paperwork requirements have led to hold-ups. Christopher Salmon, founder of clearBorder and a former adviser to Brexit minister Lord David Frost and cabinet office minister Michael Gove, said the government “needed to pull its finger out” if it expected to deliver on its border strategy for 2025, which envisages a single interface for all customs declarations.“It’s all quite arcane and antiquated at the moment . . . you have systems that can’t talk to each other,” he said.“Things won’t go back to the way they were but they can be a lot better than they are now,” he added, pointing to the creation of HMRC’s online tax self-assessment system as a blueprint.Over four-fifths of survey respondents said they had experienced delays in importing goods since January 2021, and two-thirds had encountered them when exporting.

Meanwhile, a third have had goods rejected or impounded while half of importers of perishable items said they had experienced items becoming unsellable as a result of delays.“There may not be the long queues of lorries at ports that some had predicted but [that] does not mean there aren’t issues,” said Salmon.“Instead, the impact of delays is spread along the supply chain,” he added. A majority of companies are now holding more inventory, which consumes more working capital, and 38 per cent said they had established a subsidiary in the EU to make the process smoother.Salmon added that businesses had reported experiencing delays since the documentation checks began in January. He attributed this partly to lower levels of familiarity with new requirements among overseas suppliers, especially within smaller companies, but added that “there has been a spirit of muddling through as everyone learns how to run the border”.“The difference is that this time the UK is in control of the pace of implementation,” he said, contrasting its “pragmatic” approach with the EU’s introduction of full controls in January 2021.So far, UK authorities have prioritised the flow of goods and physical inspections of items entering the UK from the EU — as opposed to just the accompanying documentation. Additional customs regulations are expected from July 1.However, Salmon said that if the border processes could be speeded up, the UK would have valuable software and expertise that it could sell to the rest of the world.“I cannot think of a trade border anywhere else in the world where such a volume of trade passes through at such a rate,” he said of the Strait of Dover. More