A somewhat less favourable performance by Russian banks has dented the regional ranking of central and eastern European lenders in 2019. For the most part, the largest Russian institutions have registered contractions to their Tier 1 capital despite some notable exceptions among mid-sized to smaller banks.
This partially contributed to the decrease in aggregate Tier 1 Capital for the region’s 25 biggest lenders. In the 2019 ranking this figure reached $141.4bn, down from the $145.8bn recorded in the 2018 ranking. Sberbank, the region’s largest lender, has seen its Tier 1 capital decrease to $54.2bn in the 2019 ranking, down from $58.3bn the previous year. Similarly, VTB Bank, which comes in at number two in the regional table, has seen its Tier 1 capital drop to $19.5bn, from $23bn.
