Translated material
The price of a “special operation” in Ukraine. Online August 25
The Bell continues to conduct online, dedicated to the economic consequences of the "special military operation" in Ukraine, which began on February 24
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20:16 Moscow exchange will resume evening trading on the stock market in September. “The most liquid instruments will be traded, primarily shares from the Moscow Exchange index,” said Boris Blokhin, director of the stock market department of the trading platform.
18:07 Roskomnadzor, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, blocked the news aggregator The True Story, said Lev Gershenzon, the former head of Yandex News (2007-2012), the creator of the project. Since Monday, a beta version of the service has been available, which provides a summary of the main events of the day with links to materials from various sources.
“Our beta is scheduled to enter the next stage - now in the Russian Federation we can only be read from under the vpn. I didn’t even hope that they would let us work freely for three whole days - apparently, August and the holiday season, ”Gershenzon wrote.
Elizaveta Osetinskaya (recognized as a foreign agent) on her channel "Russian Norms" talked with Gershenzon about how the Internet in Russia turned from a territory of freedom into a territory of non-freedom. The creator of The True Story promised that his new project would help independent media exchange traffic. The release can be viewed here .
17:36 The court in Yekaterinburg appointed Yevgeny Roizman "a ban on certain actions." Until September 29, he cannot visit public places and events, as well as use any means of communication, including the Internet.
UPD: The judge did not agree with the prosecution's request to prohibit Roizman from leaving his place of residence.
17:14 Ukrainian "Energoatom" claims that today, for the first time in history, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant was left without external power supply due to the actions of the Russian Armed Forces. As a result, two of the six power units were disconnected from the network. Pro-Russian authorities say that two blocks were disabled by automatics after the strike by the Ukrainian side.
17:03 Foreign investors from unfriendly countries will be allowed to trade on the Moscow Exchange, but in a very limited mode of negotiated transactions with their own clearing, writes RBC. There is no talk of a full-fledged automatic "glass" yet.
15:22 The American Citigroup, which was trying to sell the Russian business even before the special operation, announced that it was starting to wind down in Russia .
- The fact that Citi is getting rid of the retail business in Russia has been known since the spring of 2021, and in March 2022 the group decided to stop working with Russian legal entities as well. Citigroup said today that the process will begin soon and will affect 2.3 thousand employees and 15 branches. Work with foreign clients, especially those leaving Russia, will continue.
- Citigroup states that it was not possible to sell the Russian business, although over the past months "several strategic options have been explored." "Obviously, given the many factors complicating the local business environment, the exit scenario makes the most sense," Tim Cole, curator of non-core and divestiture assets at Citi, said in a statement.
- When winding down, the company will incur costs of $170 million over a year and a half. Citi estimated its exposure to Russia at $8.4 billion, of which only $1 billion is in banking. The bank stopped attracting new clients in March.
- that Citigroup will announce a plan to wind down in Russia after failing to agree on a business sale that has recently become outright banned today reported The Wall Street Journal candidates for the purchase of the business , but they all gradually disappeared. were named . VTB, Raiffeisen, Alfa-Bank and Sovcombank
- The support service of the Russian office does not comment on the information about the closure of branches, indicating that all materials will be published on the website. The Russian Citibank has up to 500 thousand Russian clients, it is still in the third ten in terms of assets.
14:52 Vladimir Putin, by his decree, increased the staffing of the Russian Armed Forces by 137 thousand people to 2.040 million from January 1, 2023. Patriotic Telegram channels suggest that this is due to the settlement of the status of volunteer detachments and formations as part of private security companies, PMCs, Cossack detachments and ethnic battalions.
14:37 UBS is confident that the eurozone is already in a minor recession: according to the investment bank, GDP will fall by 0.1% in the third quarter, by 0.2% in the fourth, and will grow by 0.8% over the year (instead of 1, 2% in the previous forecast). The new forecast is based on the assumption that gas will rise in price, but there will be no physical restrictions. Otherwise, "the economic damage is likely to be much worse."
The UBS forecast was released in the context of declining business confidence in Germany, the eurozone's main economy, and data on the July decline in production in the eurozone as a whole. Morgan Stanley predicts a contraction in eurozone GDP from the fourth quarter and continued high energy prices in the winter of 2023/24.
14:19 Today's shutdown of electricity and water supply in Kherson and Melitopol is connected with the activation of protection at the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant after shelling from the Ukrainian side, RIA Novosti writes with reference to local pro-Russian authorities. As of 14:30 Moscow time, power supply has been partially restored.
“According to preliminary information, as a result of massive shelling by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which continued from last night, there was a massive fire of the field and undergrowth. This led to a short circuit in the network. The indicators of the energy system have completely subsided, ” quotes a statement. RBC
The mayor of Energodar, Dmitry Orlov, accused the Russian Armed Forces of shelling.
13:48 Deliveries of grain from the ports of Ukraine have been resumed, since August 1, 700 thousand tons have been sent for export by sea. But the problems remained, writes Bloomberg - both export and domestic prices for wheat are almost twice as low as in February. Therefore, the country's agricultural producers are reducing winter wheat crops by 10-15% in favor of more expensive oilseeds, primarily sunflower, and next year's grain harvest will be noticeably lower. In addition, about a third of the cultivated area is located in areas controlled by Russia.
13:14 The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the attack on the Chaplino station in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine on August 24 was carried out on a military target. “As a result of a direct hit by an Iskander missile on a military echelon at the Chaplino railway station in the Dnipropetrovsk region, more than 200 servicemen of the reserve of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and 10 units of military equipment were destroyed on their way to the combat zone in Donbass,” the report says.
The Ukrainian authorities said that 25 people, including two children, were killed during the shelling of a "residential sector and a railway station."
11:55 The Moscow Arbitration Court ordered the return of the Russian Forbes (sold to Magomed Musaev back in 2018) to its former owner, Alexander Fedotov, writes RBC.
The plaintiff, the bankruptcy trustee of one of Fedotov's companies, Valentina Chuprinskaya, asked to recognize the value of the transaction (500 thousand rubles) as underestimated. The nominal value of the shares of JSC AS Rus Media (publisher of Forbes) was almost 69 million rubles.
The sale of Forbes to Musaev came after a long conflict between journalists and Fedotov over interference in editorial policy, including the publication of the salary rating of state managers, with the exclusion of VTB President Andrei Kostin. Dismissed under Fedotov, editor-in-chief Nikolai Uskov subsequently returned to the magazine.
The deal included the debt of the publication in the amount of 364 million rubles, Forbes development director Dmitry Ozman told RBC. He considers the decision of the court erroneous and expects that it will be canceled on appeal.
Soon, Forbes published an expanded position: the publication considers the court decision a misunderstanding that will be settled on appeal. While the process is going on, "everything remains the same in the company." “Everyone who is familiar with the media market remembers in what a deplorable and debt-laden state Mr. Fedotov left his projects, but the court ignored the fact that the new owner took on the repayment of the company’s huge debts (360 million rubles) to the budget, employees and contractors, which was expressly fixed in the contract of sale,” the statement reads, in particular.
11:14 Spot gas in Europe has risen in price to 315 euros per megawatt-hour or $3,300 per thousand cubic meters. This is already close to the historical March peak of 345 euros per MWh.
10:43 The German economy did not stagnate in the second quarter despite the energy crisis, rising inflation and the conflict in Ukraine. According to the revised data, GDP growth in the second quarter compared to the first was 0.1%, and not 0%, as in the first approximation. This is a pleasant surprise, but it does not remove concerns about the trajectory of the first EU economy, writes Bloomberg: it remains on the verge of stagnation, a quarterly contraction is likely in the fourth quarter, when annual inflation approaches 10%.
09:46 The FSB announced a terrorist attack prevented in the Kaliningrad region with traces of the Azov terrorist organization banned in Russia. A Russian citizen, a supporter of Azov, who was planning attacks at the Khrabrovo airport and at Baltic Fleet facilities, was detained. They found a bomb with 5 kg of TNT, propaganda literature and Azov symbols.
09:29 Investors are betting against the most vulnerable EU economy - Italy, which is in political uncertainty and is highly dependent on Russian gas supplies. Hedge funds have been shorting Italian government bonds for years and are now borrowing €39bn, the most since 2008. Italy has 2.3 trillion debt in government bonds, and recently the yield spread of Italian 10-year bonds with German ones reached 2.3 percentage points. compared to 1.4 p.p. at the beginning of the year.
Early elections in the country after the collapse of the parliamentary coalition and the resignation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi will be held on September 25. They are likely to win the bloc of eurosceptics headed by Georgia Meloni, and after that - a revision of the conditions for Italy's participation in the EU Recovery Fund and a delay in the receipt of 200 billion euros through this line.
The main thing for the night and morning:
The energy crisis is getting worse in Europe. On the eve it became known that European governments have allocated about 280 billion euros to mitigate its effects on businesses and households. EU energy ministers may meet for an emergency meeting to discuss a sharp increase in electricity prices, writes Bloomberg. More details about the situation will be in today's morning newsletter.
- Canada will comply with Germany's request to return all turbines for Nord Stream after repairs, said Foreign Minister Melanie Joly. In total, six turbines were being repaired, one of them is already in Germany, but Gazprom refuses to take it away, citing problems with documents.
- The court satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office against the co-founder of the Russian brand "Krasnopolyanskaya cosmetics" Dmitry Serov, writes Forbes. By a court decision, the company is obliged to vacate the land where it grows plants and shrubs for its products within 30 days. The Prosecutor General's Office claims that Krasnopolyanskaya Cosmetics uses them for other purposes. Serov does not agree with the accusation: according to him, the company grows shrubs and trees on the territory, there is an apiary, a poultry house and a snail farm. All plant extract obtained on these lands is used in production. The entrepreneur calls what is happening a mistake: the Prosecutor General's Office, in the fight against unscrupulous tenants who use land for other purposes, accidentally included Krasnopolyanskaya Kosmetika in this list, he believes. True, according to Serov, other honest farmers, for example, the Adler Tea company, also fell under the “cleansing” operation.
- The court in Yekaterinburg today will choose a measure of restraint for Yevgeny Roizman. The meeting will start at 13:00 Moscow time. The politician was detained on the eve of the case of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces. He could face up to three years in prison.
- Former Minister for Open Government Affairs Mikhail Abyzov failed to repay the 32.5 billion rubles recovered from him at the suit of the Prosecutor General's Office through the sale of shares. According to Kommersant , the court removed the arrest from the shares owned by the former minister. This was achieved by Abyzov himself in order to voluntarily repay the amount recovered from him in the lawsuit. The assets from which the arrest was lifted were estimated at a market price of almost 40 billion rubles, and the state set them off at a nominal value of 10 billion. Thus, Abyzov still owes more than 20 billion rubles, for the payment of which he will probably have to part and with other property.
The superyacht Axioma, which is associated with the sub-sanctioned Russian billionaire Dmitry Pumpyansky, was sold at auction, writes Reuters. This is the first sale of the property of Russian businessmen confiscated due to sanctions. The amount of the purchase and the name of the buyer were not disclosed. Earlier it was reported that Axioma costs about $75 million. The yacht was put up for auction two days earlier, the lot attracted 63 bids.
- Russia will bring to the discussion of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council, which will be held on August 25 and 26 in Kyrgyzstan, the issue of expanding the use of the national currencies of the EAEU countries in trade settlements, learned RBC . The Russian side will offer recommendations on increasing the share of the ruble, tenge, som, dram and the Belarusian ruble in import-export settlements between members of the union.