The logo of the Russian bank Sberbank Europe AG is visible at their headquarters in Vienna, Austria, February 28, 2022. REUTERS / Leonhard Foeger
VIENNA / SARAJEVO, March 1 – Sberbank’s European arm (SBER.MM), Russia’s largest lender, has been shut down by order of the European Central Bank, which has warned it is facing failure due to leaking deposits after Russia. invaded Ukraine, the Austrian Financial Markets Service said.
The European Central Bank’s Single Restructuring Board (SRB) ruled earlier this week that Sberbank Europe, based in Vienna, has failed or is likely to fail. This prompted the Austrian FMA on Monday to impose a moratorium on the bank’s operations.
The FMA’s announcement late Tuesday that it was ordering the bank to close came just over an hour before the moratorium expired.
“By order of the European Central Bank (ECB), the Austrian Financial Markets Authority (FMA) today issued a decision prohibiting the licensed credit institution Sberbank Europe AG … from continuing to operate in their entirety with immediate effect,” the FMA said in a statement. statement at 22:45 (21:45 GMT). Read more
The European Union and the United States have responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with a series of sanctions, including a ban on major Russian banks from SWIFT, the main global payment system.
As a result, Sberbank Europe said on Monday that several of its banks had “suffered a significant outflow of customer deposits in a very short period of time”.
The SRB has ordered a moratorium to determine whether the case should be dealt with under European rules on bank restructuring and decided it should not, the FMA said.
The FMA said it had appointed an administrator to determine if and when the insolvency criteria were met. Meanwhile, the closure triggered Austria’s deposit guarantee scheme, which covers deposits of up to 100,000 euros ($ 111,240) per customer, the FMA said.
The central banks of Slovenia and Croatia have announced that Sberbank’s operations in their countries will be taken over by Slovenia’s largest banking group, NLB, and the Croatian Post Bank (HPB), which is the majority owner of the government.
Customers will be able to withdraw money as usual from Wednesday after the restrictions for the last two days.
Sberbank Europe said in November that it had reached a deal to sell its subsidiaries in Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to a group that includes Serbia’s AIK Bank and Slovenia’s Gorenjska Bank.
Serbian regulators agreed on Monday, but Gorenjska said it was no longer viable to proceed with the acquisition of the Slovenian subsidiary.
Sarajevo-based ASA Banka has acquired Sberbank Sarajevo, the banking agency of the Bosnian Croat Federation announced late Tuesday, while the government of the Republic of Serbia acquired Sberbank Banja Luka on Monday.
(1 dollar = 0.8990 euros)
Report by Francois Murphy; Additional reports by Kirsten Donovan in London; Edited by Leslie Adler, Kirsten Donovan
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