By Andrei Skvarsky. Investment bank Renaissance Capital predicts economic growth of between 2 and 6 per cent for 2021 for the majority of former Soviet republics and expects Russia to end the year with a gross domestic product increase of 3.8 percent. The Russian percentage is higher than the consensus forecast, RenCap’s economist for Russia… Continue Reading
EVENTS: Opal-organised online forum on Feb 10-11 to explore Covid effects on investment in U.S. pension system
The Public Funds Summit, a virtual conference on February 10-11, will focus on effects of Covid-19 on investment in the U.S. public pension system. The event has an extensive programme with presentations, panel discussions and plenty of time for networking. Please email the summit organiser, New York-based event management company Opal Group, at info@opalgroup.net for a copy… Continue Reading
Russia’s GV Gold boosts gold production by 5% YoY
By Andrei Skvarsky. GV Gold, one of Russia’s top gold mining companies, has reported gold output of 272 kilo ounces (koz) for 2020 or five per cent up on 2019 and announced it expects to produce between 290 and 300 koz in 2021. The statistics are combined figures for the parent company and the subsidiaries,… Continue Reading
Moscow’s Japanese-owned SBI Bank to get investment from sovereign funds
By Andrei Skvarsky. Two state-owned investment promotion funds, one of them Russian and the other Russian-Japanese, have pledged to make a joint investment in SBI Bank, a Russian lender owned by Japanese group SBI Holdings. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and the Russia-Japan Investment Fund, which has been instituted by RDIF and a subsidiary… Continue Reading
Swiss bank Julius Baer hires six relationship managers for Hispanic America business
By Andrei Skvarsky. Swiss bank Julius Baer has hired six relationship managers for its Hispanic America operation, with five of the newcomers joining from Zurich-based bulge bracket bank Credit Suisse and two having worked at Spanish lender BBVA. All six are due to take their jobs on February 1 and will be based in Zurich,… Continue Reading
ActivTrades: Pound doing better than dollar, euro, due to good start of UK Covid vaccination
London-based foreign exchange broker ActivTrades has reported the British pound to have done better than the dollar or the euro in early January 27 trading, attributing this to perceived investor optimism brought about by Britain’s successful start of Covid-19 vaccination. Markets see the successful roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Britain, where coronavirus has killed… Continue Reading
Russia’s Sovcombank says receiving its first ESG loan
By Andrei Skvarsky. Sovcombank, one of Russia’s largest banks by assets, has announced it has signed an agreement to receive its first loan to be based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles. Financing Sovcombank’s buy-now-pay-later Halva card programme is the purpose of the ESG tranche of a two-tranche syndicated loan of $350m arranged for… Continue Reading
ActivTrades broker abolishes some fees, offers to sell fractional shares
ActivTrades, an online foreign exchange (forex) and contract for differences (CFD) broker, has started off 2021 with special offers, abolishing some of its trading fees and allowing purchases of parts of shares rather than full shares. There will be no trading fees for any European, British or U.S. stocks sold to non-leveraged retail investors. Nor… Continue Reading
Waning of risk-on feelings getting the dollar up – ActivTrades
London-headquartered financial brokerageActivTrades argues that recent risk-on sentiments in financial markets about U.S. monetary policies are going away and that this explains the current edging up of the dollar versus other principal currencies. With the Democrats having won control of the White House and both houses of Congress, the Federal Reserve is likely to move… Continue Reading
EVENTS: HSBC, BNP Paribas, Lloyds to focus on AI’s anti-fraud potential during online summit on Jan 28-29
Senior executives in about a dozen banks, among them big names such as HSBC, BNP Paribas, Lloyds Bank and NatWest Group, will address the Artificial Intelligence in Payments and Fraud Risk Management (Europe) Summit, a virtual conference set for January 28-29. Altogether there will be more than 50 speakers during the event, which is expected… Continue Reading
TSC, Anatase co-design indices of water risk to corporate earnings
By Andrei Skvarsky. Financial consultancies Thomas Schumann Capital (TSC) and Anatase Ltd have developed, with support from financial markets data company Refinitiv, a family of indices to show whether the quantity and quality of water used by a company in its business pose any risk to its earnings and how serious such risk is. The… Continue Reading
Russia’s Sberbank upbeat about its Islamic finance record
By Andrei Skvarsky. Sberbank’s business areas include Islamic finance, and Russia’s biggest lender has shown good performance in this field in 2020, according to a statement from the bank. Sberbank, which is currently rebranding itself as Sber, has obtained regulatory approval in Russia and the United Arab Emirates for opening a subsidiary in Abu Dhabi,… Continue Reading
Sberbank media chief Dobrokhvalova to simultaneously head Rambler
Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, has announced that the head of its media, advertising and entertainments division, Tatyana Dobrokhvalova, has been appointed as chief executive officer of Russian internet company Rambler, a Sberbank subsidiary, a position she will combine with her current Sberbank post. As CEO of Rambler, a company that runs one of Russia’s key… Continue Reading
Russia’s Sovcombank to lend up to $300m for building Akkuyu nuclear plant in Turkey
By Andrei Skvarsky. Sovcombank, one of Russia’s largest banks, has entered into a deal in which it would lend a maximum of $300m to co-finance Russia’s current construction of a nuclear power plant at Akkuyu, Turkey, the first Turkish nuclear generating facility. The borrower is construction project operator Akkuyu Nuclear JSC, a subsidiary of Russian… Continue Reading
Deal with identity verifier Sumsub provides Leverate fintech firm with anti-fraud solutions
By Andrei Skvarsky. Leverate, a Limassol-headquartered technology provider for foreign exchange brokerages, has clinched a deal with London-based identity verifier Sumsub that supplements packages offered to clients by the Cyprus-based company with anti-fraud technologies. The terms of the deal save customers of Leverate, whose technology is used by about 65,000 traders, the trouble of going… Continue Reading
M4Markets forex, CFD broker upgrades arsenal by launching MT5 platform
By Andrei Skvarsky. M4Markets, a foreign exchange and contract-for-differences (CFD) brokerage, has announced it has rolled out a MetaTrader 5 (MT5) electronic trading platform in addition to the less sophisticated MetaTrader 4 (MT4) it used until then. MT5 offers a range of features that MT4 does not possess. They include an in-built economic calendar, the possibility… Continue Reading
Sberbank adopts role of Russian vehicle of WEF’s climate-related initiative
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank has taken on the mission of a key vehicle in Russia for a World Economic Forum (WEF) initiative to encourage companies to take better account of risks caused by climate change in their business planning. Sberbank, which is rebranding itself as Sber, has become general partner of Russian… Continue Reading
M4Markets FX and CFD broker launches festive rebate promo
By Andrei Skvarsky. M4Markets, a foreign exchange (FX) and contract-for-difference (CFD) brokerage, has announced that clients of the company will receive $2 for every lot they trade as a Christmas-New Year rebate promotion launched on December 1 and expiring on January 31. Only direct clients, both current and new ones, and only those holding a standard… Continue Reading
Sberbank uses character from 1970s movie in deepfake ad
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank has shot a humour-tinged deepfake ad video showing a character transferred from a 1973 Soviet comedy film into the Moscow of 2020 being amazed by and enjoying a variety of services offered by the bank’s ecosystem. Petty burglar George Miloslavsky from the movie Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession,… Continue Reading
Russian timber business Segezha reports 38 pct YOY revenue growth
By Andrei Skvarsky. The revenue of Russian timber products manufacturer Segezha Group showed a year-on-year increase of 38 per cent as of the end of September, according to the company, which is part of Russian conglomerate Sistema. Segezha had a revenue of 19bn roubles ($256m) for the third quarter of 2020, which was 38 per… Continue Reading
Dubai’s Emirates NBD says new device for clients is all-in-one cash admin system
By Andrei Skvarsky. Dubai’s largest bank Emirates NBD has launched a digital platform for its business clients that, according to the lender, enables them to manage all their financial activities. The businessONLINE platform offers “a full suite” of cash and liquidity management and trade finance solutions to clients “ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to… Continue Reading
EVENTS: Day 2 of the Future of Insurance Europe in Progress
Day two of The Future of Insurance Europe, a two-day online conference organised by Reuters Events and bringing together more than 3,500 insurance professionals, is live now. Please check the list of speakers on https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexanderjhbird_insurance-disruption-future-activity-6737294463779004416-E8q9. Continue Reading
Ingot Brokers speeds up client verification to ‘3 minutes’ via deal with Sumsub
By Andrei Skvarsky. Australian multi-asset financial brokerage Ingot Brokers has drastically speeded up its client identity verification procedure and made it more accurate via an automated solution acquired from London-headquartered identity verifier Sumsub. The solution, obtained by Ingot from Sumsub under a partnership agreement, cuts customer onboarding time “from 3 days to 3 minutes”, the… Continue Reading
EVENT REMINDER: Banks, tech firms to discuss future of banking in Saudi Arabia at online conference on Nov 23-24
Bankers and IT specialists will share their views on the future of banking in Saudi Arabia during a two-day online conference starting at 7am GMT on Monday. About a dozen banks, mostly Saudi, and some global tech companies are coming together at Future Banks Summit KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] on November 23-24. The event,… Continue Reading
Russian e-payment service Yandex.Checkout being renamed YooMoney for foreign markets
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russian online payment service Yandex.Checkout, which is owned by Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank, will rebrand itself as YooMoney for non-Russian markets. The rebranding will be completed by December 15, 2020, before which the payment company will use both names, Yandex.Checkout and YooMoney, the firm said in a statement. Sberbank became the sole… Continue Reading
Sberbank promotes tech unit chief to senior VP
Konstantin Kruglov, chief executive of the SberDevices department of Sberbank’s technology division, has been promoted to senior vice-president of Russia’s biggest lender. Kruglov will remain in the technology division and will continue to oversee the development of artificial intelligence-based solutions for speech, natural language processing, face and voice authentication and virtual assistants technologies, Sberbank said… Continue Reading
Sberbank widens range of languages it uses to talk to foreign clients
By Andrei Skvarsky. Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, has enlarged the range of foreign languages it uses to communicate with non-Russian-speaking customers, adding Japanese, Chinese, Korean, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Uzbek, and Tajik to English, which it has used before. Sberbank branches have presentations of key products and services such as cards, savings accounts, internet… Continue Reading
EVENT REMINDER: AI, mobile payments, cyber threats to be discussed at Saudi-focused Future Banks Summit KSA on Nov 23-24
The use of artificial intelligence in banking, mobile payment and wallet innovations, and new cyber threats facing banks in Saudi Arabia are among numerous topics to be raised at the Saudi-focused online Future Banks Summit KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] on November 23-24. There will be several panel sessions, several presentations and ten hours of… Continue Reading
U.S. asset manager Castlestone: Biden victory, split Congress super news for stock markets
By Andrei Skvarsky. U.S. asset manager Castlestone Management argues that Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the Unites States’ presidential election and a Congress split between Democrats and Republicans after recent polls will most likely give a powerful boost to American stock markets. Investment in equities normally increases after elections anyway, but, historically, having a Democratic… Continue Reading