The dominance of Russia’s state-owned banking giants has been growing in recent years. Among Russia’s top 20 banks, which had a total of $737bn in assets between them at the end of 2010, state-owned banks held a 75% share, up from 73% a year earlier. The country’s largest bank, Sberbank, which is 58% owned by the state (with 60% of voting rights), has assets of $283bn, just short of 10 times the size of the largest privately owned bank, Alfa Bank.
In the same period, the share of assets for foreign-owned banks slipped by one percentage point. While Citibank’s Russian subsidiary continued growing, Raiffeisen and Societe Generale’s Rosbank both deleveraged. This trend appeared to continue into 2011, with Barclays, Santander and HSBC all winding down retail banking operations in the country.
