The owner of Russia’s 12th-biggest lender by assets, B&N Bank, has asked the central bank for a bailout, the regulator said yesterday, three weeks after another leading Russian bank had to be rescued.
The central bank, in an e-mailed statement, said B&N Bank’s owners, a holding group controlled by tycoon Mikhail Gutseriev and his family, had asked for financial rehabilitation via the central bank’s Fund for Banking Sector Consolidation.
That is the same mechanism that is being used to rescue Otkritie FC Bank, Russia’s largest private lender, after it late last month said it had a hole in its balance sheet and needed help.
The central bank said that it would make a decision on the request from B&N Bank in the near future.
Safmar, the holding group that controls B&N Bank, declined to comment.
A combination of factors has been putting pressure on some Russian banks.
They were already under stress from an economic slowdown, made worse by Western sanctions, and have seen their share of bad debts rise over the past three years.
For some, their financial health worsened after the central bank, as part of a drive to clean up the banking sector, forced banks to make more rigorous provisions for non-performing loans. At the same time, banks’ margins have tightened because interest rates have come down.
Officials and banking sector analysts say they do not see a risk of a systemic banking crisis. They say that state-controlled banks, which account for more than half of assets in the sector, have strong capital positions and so are not in danger.
B&N Bank, founded in 1993, is part of a conglomerate controlled by Gutseriev and his family that includes oil companies, a property development portfolio and an electronics retailer.
B&N Bank embarked on an expansion strategy after 2010, taking over smaller lenders including Moskomprivatbank, Rost Bank, SKA-Bank and others. It is not on the central bank’s list of systemically important lenders.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
RSS