Russia’s central bank has moved out of the Kremlin’s pocket and is starting to regulate the sector aggressively. Ben Aris reports from Moscow.

Rossisky Kredit Bank nearly went under in Russia’s 1998 financial crisis. Ben Aris reports from Moscow on how it weathered the storm and its miraculous comeback as an investment bank.
Rossisky Kredit Bank (RKB) is back from the dead. One of the dozen banks that were household names in the 1990s, but collapsed during the 1998 financial crisis, RKB is the only big Russian bank to have paid off all its debts and returned to profit.
RKB’s recovery is a damning condemnation of its peers, which walked away from billions of dollars in debt and left hundreds of thousands of pensioners destitute after they lost their life savings.

Investors are falling over themselves to buy bonds issued by Russia’s state-owned Gazprombank. Edward Russell-Walling explains why.
Russian banks are not always synonymous with credit quality. When Gazprombank came to market in September with a 10-year bond, however, the issue was more than six times oversubscribed. There are Russian banks, and Russian banks.

As the Yukos affair fades into a one-off event, both domestic and foreign investors are showing renewed interest in Russian equities and IPOs.

Buoyant bond and stock markets, as well as legal complications, have discouraged project finance growth. But, as Ben Aris reports from Moscow, the sector is predicted to grow swiftly in the near future.

The cranes have arrived. With high oil and gas prices, rising personal incomes and political stability has come the real estate bug.

Vneshtorgbank is using its acquisition of Guta Bank to build up its retail services, planning more branches and aiming for a leading role in the mortgage market. By Brian Caplen.
Russian state-owned Vneshtorgbank is pushing ahead on the retail front, aiming to claim an 8%-10% share of the market by 2010. During that period, total assets are expected to rise from $15bn to $35bn, including a forecast rise in mortgages from $150m to $2bn and in consumer lending from $300m to $3bn.

Ukraine and Russia will be in the EU within the next 15 years, argue Peter Schwartz and Chris Coldewey, with Ukraine in pole position.

Raiffeisen International has been highly successful in entering new markets in central and eastern Europe and it now has plans for dramatic organic growth in Russia, CEO Herbert Stepic tells Stephen Timewell.

Following a year of ups and downs in the Russian economy, The Banker’s conference on May 11 attracted a good crowd, interested in the latest developments, reports Gerry O’Kane.