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Contents
Summary 3
Russian politics 4
Macroeconomic environment 11
Russia on a long-term perspective 20
Investor recommendations 77
Bank profiles 85
Absolut Bank ...........................................................................................................86
Ak Bars Bank...........................................................................................................87
Alfa Bank .................................................................................................................88
Bank of Moscow......................................................................................................89
Petrocommerce Bank..............................................................................................90
Bank St.Petersburg .................................................................................................91
Bank Zenit ...............................................................................................................92
Bin Bank ..................................................................................................................93
Credit Bank of Moscow ...........................................................................................94
Gazprombank..........................................................................................................95
Home Credit and Finance Bank ..............................................................................96
International Industrial Bank....................................................................................97
Locko Bank..............................................................................................................98
MDM Bank...............................................................................................................99
MBRD....................................................................................................................100
NOMOS Bank........................................................................................................101
Promsvyazbank.....................................................................................................102
Russian Agricultural Bank .....................................................................................103
Russian Standard Bank.........................................................................................104
Sberbank ...............................................................................................................105
Soyuz Bank ...........................................................................................................106
Tatfondbank ..........................................................................................................107
Transcapitalbank ...................................................................................................108
Transcreditbank.....................................................................................................109
Ursa Bank..............................................................................................................110
VTB .......................................................................................................................111
Disclosures 112
Summary
A closer look at Russian banking shows that the local political and economic
environments are more favourable today for the domestic banking sector than ever,
and indeed, more favourable than in neighbouring countries of the CIS. This makes us
optimistic that the Russian banking system will weather the global credit crunch
consequences with few fundamental problems.
Following Vladimir Putin’s succession by Dmitry Medvedev to the Russian presidency,
we see a continuation of economic policy and reforms in the financial sector. Although
many issues are still to be addressed in the Russian economy, we believe that Russia
will weather the global slowdown smoothly on the back of strong domestic factors –
government spending and consumer demand – and will emerge as one of the fastest
growing and most attractive economies for foreign investment in the 21st century.
Although scarce external funding inflows have put some banks’ funding models in
question, we believe that they have enough resources to fill the funding gap, and
enough flexibility to re-orientate in the new environment. The central bank’s liquidity
support in the sector, the largely underutilised savings potential of the Russian
population and still very high attractiveness of Russian banking sector for foreign
strategic investors make it improbable that these banks would default.
We expect Russian state-owned banks to thrive in the ‘crisis’, increasing their domestic
market share and becoming notable international companies. Their excellent
fundamentals coupled with robust sovereign credit make the state-owned giants an
attractive choice, even for conservative investors.
Although the banking sector bond universe has changed in the wake of the credit
crunch, becoming less liquid and more volatile, we still see quite a lot of good upside
potential for investors, valuing positive mid-term economic prospects over short-term
volatility. We expect Russian banking sector bonds to rebound further on the back of its
participants’ fundamentals, continuous banking sector reforms, increasing foreign
presence and the general improvement of investors’ sentiment toward Russia in 2H08-
09.
In the first part of our report, we focus on the general characteristics and most notable
trends in Russian politics, economy and banking, including the effect of the credit
crunch on its dynamics and outlook for 2H08-09.
The second part is a brief overview of the largest banks, ie, the eurobond issuers,
including their credit profile and most recent financials. While we do not present formal
recommendations, we now highlight our assessment of the issuers’ relative credit
strength, and we consider benchmarks for the debt’s relative valuation.
Russian politics
Medvedev: a new era or merely step two?
As widely expected, Dmitry Medvedev was elected on 2 March 2008 as Russia's third
president with 70.23% of the vote, and took office formally in early May. The former
president, Vladimir Putin, left the presidential office to take up the position of prime
minister under his successor.
This unusual move for such a powerful politician as Mr Putin, who could have stayed in
the office indefinitely (possibly becoming president-for-life like Nursultan Nazarbaev in
Kazakhstan) resulted in an odd bi-polar power model, with a strong presidency and an
even stronger PM. This has puzzled many external observers and raised many
questions about the political stability of such a combination.
Considering all factors around Mr Medvedev’s election, we believe that although he
would not just be a silent tool for the policymaker Putin, he will follow closely the
guidelines set out by the ex-president and will not risk any considerable conflict with
him.
The reasons which make us believe this are:
• Although this changed during the Putin presidency, according to the Russian
constitution the PM legally has significant powers and - holding the majority of
supporters in the Duma - can in effect change the constitution and shift Russia to a
parliamentary democracy, obstructing most of the president’s powers. Also, the
parliament is in a position to veto all the president's decrees and override his veto.
Although Mr Medvedev as president could also theoretically sack Mr Putin as PM,
experience of the Yeltsin era showed that this might backfire in a political crisis,
especially given Mr Putin’s popularity among Russians.
• Unlike his predecessors, who derived their popular support from a hatred of their
predecessor (Gorbachev's popularity after Brezhnev's economic downturn, support
for Yeltsin after the Gorbachev era breakdown of the Soviet Union, Putin's
enormous popularity on the back of the misery of the Yeltsin era), Mr Medvedev
received popular support only because of perception of him as the ‘heir’ to Mr
Putin. As most of his power comes from his personal association with Mr Putin, any
effort to undermine his mentor’s person or vision will act against him, resulting in a
loss of credibility with the Russian population.
• Mr Putin’s carefully established network of allies from the ex-KGB structures, which
helped him to regain control over the state at the beginning of 2000s, is still in
place, while Mr Medvedev has no government body or structure of significant
control of his own. Moreover, Mr Putin’s close supporter, first deputy prime minister
Sergei Ivanov, is strongly aligned to the military and would back Mr Putin if Mr
Medvedev decides to challenge him.
• We strongly believe that obstructing Mr Putin from a position of power in any way –
direct or indirect- would put Mr Medvedev’s own position in danger. The
governance structure that Mr Putin created and which forms the backbone of the
Russian state today, relies on the web of relationships between security personnel
in various influential positions, established during his presidency. Without Mr Putin
to guarantee stability in this network, Mr Medvedev risks losing out to someone
from a similar background to Mr Putin – or in the worst case - power might slip
again from the Kremlin back to the business interest groups that dominated the
political landscape under Boris Yeltsin. Also, some believe that the rule of money is
still stronger than the rule of law in Russia, so this scenario may also be realistic.
Why Putin is a Russian hero in politics and
business
Without offering any moral judgements about Mr Putin’s policy or accessing his role in
the history, we will try to explain why he is so popular with the Russian population.
When Vladimir Putin, a low-profile bureaucrat virtually unknown outside St Petersburg,
took over from Boris Yeltsin in 2000, he was described by many independent external
observers as a ‘puppet of the oligarchs’ who ruled the Kremlin at the time. Ironically,
when Mr Putin started to consolidate political and economic power in the country using
his network of security operatives to obstruct the oligarchs through direct confrontation,
court rulings and renationalisation of major former state assets, privatised in the 1990s
by Yeltsin’s close circle, his image changed immediately to that of a Stalin-like dictator.
Without commenting on the morality of ‘fighting evil with evil’, we should admit that
despite (or thanks to) his methods, in just a few years Mr Putin succeeded in reestablishing
control of central government, which was ruled previously by regional
business groups, and returned the country’s oil and gas assets to state control,
ensuring the possibility of national wealth being accumulated from the revenues that
accrued (into a stabilisation fund that he created), instead of ending up in the private
accounts of a few oligarchs.
Although Mr Putin has not progressed much on creating a democratic system which
would ensure the rule of law, we would not necessarily agree with the criticism either
that he ‘dismissed the democratic freedoms of the 1990s’. In fact, very few Russians
would agree that the anarchic, ungovernable Russia of the 1990s was anything
resembling a democracy: most influential businessmen/politicians were dividing up
former state-owned assets, often in bloody wars with numerous ordered
assassinations and violence, local officials were mired in corruption and apathy, taxes
could not be levied, the judiciary and the police resembled some kind of criminal
structure and were used by business groups for asset distribution, the central state
administration was unable to change the situation even it wanted to, rather it was
involved in ‘private property creation’ itself as well.
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