By Andrei Skvarsky. Otkritie Bank, part of Otkritie Financial Corp, last week received a long-term B rating from Fitch with a Rating Watch Positive outlook in what the Moscow-based corporation sees as good going for a lender just two years old. B (‘financial situation varies noticeably’) is the second-highest tier in Fitch’s Non-Investment Grade. Otkritie… Continue Reading
Category Archives: News
Deutsche Bank's CEEMEA top brass part company with senior figure
By Andrei Skvarsky. Deutsche Bank has parted company with Saleh Romeih, head of central and eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at the firm’s capital markets and treasury solutions (CMTS) unit. Nizar Al-Bassam, head of markets sales and coverage for the region, has been named as Romeih’s replacement, according to Bloomberg. Romeih is credited with… Continue Reading
Troika Dialog makes two more hires for investment banking team
By Andrei Skvarsky. Troika Dialog has hired Max Kolodkin from Goldman Sachs and Sergei Chinkis from HSBC to co-head its investment banking division. Kolodkin, who was a managing director at Goldman and was involved in deals with major companies such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, will run a consumer and retail trade section, according to Russian… Continue Reading
Abraaj, US govt launch $400m Middle East private equity fund
By Andrei Skvarsky. Abraaj Capital, a leading Middle East private equity firm, is going to set up a $400m fund to boost small- and medium-scale business in North Africa and the Middle East and has signed a $150m deal with the US government to partially finance the project. Egypt is “one of the core target… Continue Reading
Troika Dialog’s brokerage renamed SIB Financial Broker
Troika Dialog’s brokerage unit, Financial Broker Troika Dialog, has changed its name to SIB Financial Broker. The renaming of this and other divisions of Troika is part of the ongoing merger between the Moscow-headquartered investment firm and Sberbank designed to give Russia’s biggest lender an investment banking platform. The broker’s change of name will not… Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Royal Bank of Scotland equity derivatives unit makes first sales hire in Russia
By Andrei Skvarsky. Royal Bank of Scotland’s investor products and equity derivatives (IPED) division has made its first-ever sales hire in Russia, recruiting Peter Krivdin from Renaissance Capital as sales director for Russia and the CIS. “This means we believe in Russia and the CIS as a strong part of our emerging markets operations, thus… Continue Reading
Russia’s Investtradebank raided by police over ‘illegal banking’
Russia’s Investtradebank raided by police over ‘illegal banking’ By Andrei Skvarsky. Investtradebank, a mid-sized Russian lender also known by its Russian name Investtorgbank, had its headquarters and some of its branches in Moscow searched by police on Wednesday in one in a series of raids as part of alleged action to prevent illegal banking. Business… Continue Reading
Russia’s BCS makes four top hires for new London unit
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russian broker BCS has opened a unit in London and made four senior appointments for it. Joseph (Yossi) Dayan was hired as head of markets, Luis Saenz as head of equity and derivatives sales and trading, Mark Cleary as head of sales trading, and Tim Bevan as head of international direct market… Continue Reading
Otkritie CEO tapped for Nomos president as part of takeover
By Andrei Skvarsky. Otkritie Financial Corp’s chief executive and main stakeholder, Vadim Belyayev, has been tapped for president of Nomos-Bank as part of a recent deal that will make Nomos part of the Moscow-headquartered corporation within the next couple of years. Belyayev is likely to receive his new appointment within a month, Russian business daily… Continue Reading
VTB Capital makes two hires for Asia top brass
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s VTB Capital has hired Daren Wong, previously a senior executive at Bank of China in Hong Kong, as head of high yield trading for Asia, and appointed former Merrill Lynch banker Roger Suyama to oversee Indonesia coverage. Wong, who will be based in Hong Kong, headed Morgan Stanley’s unit for Asia… Continue Reading
Top Troika Dialog salesmen move to Sberbank
By Andrei Skvarsky. Sberbank has given top roles in its private banking unit to Alexei Dolgikh and Igor Prokhayev, who have come over from Troika Dialog in a move appearing to be part of the current mutual integration of the two institutions. A Sberbank spokeswoman told EmergingMarkets.me that Dolgikh and Prokhayev, who have worked as… Continue Reading
Otkritie to take over Nomos
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s Otkritie Financial Corp plans to buy out Nomos-Bank, in which it owns a one-fifth stake, in a declared bid to become “the largest independent public financial group in Russia” within the next three years. Otkritie, which plans an initial public offering, said in a statement it has clinched a deal with… Continue Reading
Morgan Stanley parting company with top managers for Russia
By Andrei Skvarsky. Morgan Stanley is parting company with the two top managers of its Russian office, chairman Rair Simonyan and president Elena Titova. Media reports have expressed a surmise that both may join Russian oil major Rosneft. Reuters cited Russian media as saying Titova, who spent around 12 years at Goldman Sachs before joining… Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: Merrill’s Korishchenko to become CEO of Russia’s Investbank
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s Investbank has confirmed that it is handing its job of chief executive to Konstantin Korishchenko, who is quitting as Merrill Lynch’s head for Russia. An Investbank spokeswoman told EmergingMarkets.me that Korishchenko’s candidacy had been approved by the supervisory board of the Moscow-based firm but that the appointment procedure would take a… Continue Reading
ING names head of commercial banking in Russia
By Andrei Skvarsky. The Netherlands’ ING Group has appointed its veteran Luc Truyens as head of commercial banking in Russia. Truyens, who takes up his duties on September 3, joined Banque Bruxelles Lambert (BBL) 29 years ago and has stayed at ING since the latter took over the Brussels-headquartered bank in 1998. “With the arrival… Continue Reading
Troika Dialog hires ex-VTB banker to run intl fixed income sales
By Andrei Skvarsky. Troika Dialog has hired Dean Tyler from VTB Capital as head of international fixed income sales. The recruitment of Tyler, who took up his duties this month and is based in Troika’s London office, is part of the Moscow-based brokerage’s current integration with Sberbank that aims to give Russia’s biggest lender a… Continue Reading
GOLDMAN SACHS COMMENT – Russia: The only G20 economy that needs to slow down
By Clemens Grafe, Chief Economist, Goldman Sachs Russia. (Excerpt) Russia’s economy continues to be out of synch with much of the rest of the world: GDP growth has held up at an above-trend pace despite a slowing global economy. That said, we estimate that the output gap has now closed and that the economy will… Continue Reading
EXCLUSIVE: New investment fund going after Russian agriculture’s untapped potential
By Andrei Skvarsky. Three British businessmen have set up a fund to invest in agriculture in Russia and elsewhere in the CIS, turning to a largely neglected industry with vast investment opportunities. Investing in the abysmal infrastructure of Russian agriculture is the chief objective of the fund, which has an equity target of $150m and… Continue Reading
WERMUTH COMMENT: Markets are far from convinced that the Brussels agreement will work for the euro
By Dieter Wermuth, Chief Economist, Wermuth Asset Management. Other than I had expected, the June 29 agreements about the euro area banking union had impressed markets for only a short while. I think, though, that we have been witness to an irreversible quantum leap towards a stable institutional set-up for the common currency. The dangerous… Continue Reading
GOLDMAN SACHS COMMENT: Markets and Moods
By Jim O’Neill, Chairman, Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Markets and Moods. So, here’s the situation. The mood is grim. A lot of economic data has turned grimmer, which makes many people so bearish about many things, markets included. Much of the “mood” centres on a sense of hopelessness about Europe, with the risk on/risk off… Continue Reading
Ex-adviser to Russian government: “zero prospect” of Moscow being international financial centre
By Andrei Skvarsky. Tim Reucroft, a London-based consultant who has advised Russia and other emerging markets on capital market infrastructures, has said the Kremlin’s plan to turn Moscow into an international financial centre has “zero prospect” of materialising. An IFC is all about cross-border flows, and so the Russians are wrong to be focusing on… Continue Reading
RenCap beefs up global business with dozen appointments
By Andrei Skvarsky. Renaissance Capital has beefed up its operations across the globe this month with a series of senior hires and staff moves. The appointees have filled equity products, research, electronic trading and other positions at RenCap, the Moscow-headquartered investment bank said in a series of statements. They include five senior managers in the… Continue Reading
RenCap gains quicker access to Micex-RTS with GATElab module
By Andrei Skvarsky. Renaissance Capital has obtained much faster access to the Micex-RTS stock exchange this month by launching a software module developed by electronic trading solutions provider GATElab. By using GATE’s high frequency software trading module, a RenCap client would take a maximum of 130 microseconds to gain one way nic-to-nic access to Micex-RTS,… Continue Reading
SunGard comes up with software to fight market manipulation
By Andrei Skvarsky. SunGard, a multinational software and technology services company, has extended the capabilities of its principal risk avoidance and transparency suite to help regulators, trading venues and firms to detect and prevent market manipulation and insider trading. One of the new features of the Protegent set of programs is a library of rules… Continue Reading
RenCap’s ranks of clients likely to swell after etrade deal
By Andrei Skvarsky. Renaissance Capital has joined the trading network of global online services provider SunGard in a move enabling the Russian investment bank to offer brokerage services to more than 2,000 asset management companies and 530 brokerages seeking access to Russian markets. SunGard clients will now be able to route trade order flows directly to Russia’s Micex-RTS… Continue Reading
RenCap says ruble’s decline no reason for anxiety
By Andrei Skvarsky. Renaissance Capital argues that this month’s 7.2% decline of the Russian ruble versus the dollar is not much to worry about. Various currencies have been going down against the dollar, and the ruble has been doing better than, for example, the Polish zloty, the Hungarian forint or the Czech koruna, which have… Continue Reading
AGC makes biggest-ever Middle East investment in Russia
By Andrei Skvarsky. AGC Equity Partners has acquired $175m interest in a major Russian generating company in what is seen as the largest-ever Middle East investment in Russia. The London-headquartered firm with a team in the Middle East is part of an international consortium that has bought a 26.43% blocking stake in Italian-controlled Enel OGK-5… Continue Reading
Renaissance promotes Merzlenko, Andrews to partners
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s Renaissance Group has appointed two of its top bankers, Alexander Merzlenko and Nick Andrews, as partners. Merzlenko joined Renaissance Capital in 2000. In 2009, he was appointed as RenCap’s head of Russian investment banking and financing, and in 2011 given an additional role as Renaissance Group’s deputy CEO for Russia. He… Continue Reading
Investors should avoid Russia’s oil and gas sector – Wermuth
By Andrei Skvarsky. Russia’s oil and gas sector would be the wrong choice for an investor these days, according to Dieter Wermuth, chief economist at Wermuth Asset Management, a Russia-focused German fund manager. With global economic growth slowing down significantly, a world oil price that has quintupled since 2003 makes no sense economically and mainly… Continue Reading