What It’s Like to Be a Banker in Russia During Wartime
The Russian unit of Austria’s Raiffeisen is immensely profitable, but it can’t get the money out of the country.
This is part of a series on the new realities of finance. Read more on junior bankers using AI, being Black on Wall Street and bank access for weed companies.
As Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine drags on, Raiffeisen Bank International AG still hasn’t solved the problem that’s vexed it for the past four years: The Austrian lender owns the biggest foreign bank in Russia, and it can’t—or won’t—get out. Unlike rivals such as Société Générale SA and HSBC Holdings Plc that have left the country, Raiffeisen has stayed there—and by some measures has profited handsomely by doing so, piling up billions of dollars in profit. The catch: Raiffeisen can’t get that money out of Russia, and it hasn’t been able to sell the operation, even at the Kremlin-mandated price of half the unit’s real value. “We worked from the very beginning to find a buyer,” says Chief Executive Officer Johann Strobl. “This hasn’t happened.”