Futures and options trading in Russia is making a tentative comeback since its curtailment in the wake of the 1998 financial crisis. Ben Aris in Moscow reports.There are few places in the world where the future is less certain than in Russia, but maturing valuations of Russian stocks means an increasing number of investors are willing to bet on it.
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.
Kazakhstan is one of the leading lights of the ex-Soviet Bloc, with such well-developed banking and pension sectors that they are searching for somewhere to invest their money.Ben Aris reports from Almaty.The trees that cloak the buildings in central Almaty provide only limited protection from the hot midday sun, but Kazakhs window-shopping in the new Ramstore shopping mall at the top of the city’s slope beneath the Tien Shan mountains are keeping cool.