Garegin Tosunyan, president of the Association of Banks of Cenytral Russia (left), and Stanislav Spitsyn, head of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of the Central Bank of Russia
Photo: Roman Yarovitsin
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Russian Banking Reform Has Enemies
Bank reform is moving slowly in Russia because of resistance from influential circles whose interests are involved. The unsolved murder of first deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia Andrey Kozlov in September 2006 is evidence of that resistance, international rating service Standard & Poor’s writes in a report on the Russian banking system.
S&P notes that reform is long overdue in the Russian banking sector and could raise Russian banks’ ratings and give impetus to development. Russian banks now have only of the lowest average ratings in the world. The agency also notes that Russian banks themselves need to make efforts to raise their ratings and reduce their risks.
Most changes in the Russian banking sector are cyclical and unstable in character. Raising the creditworthiness of Russian banks would improve the macroeconomic climate. Russian industry is also influenced by the creditworthiness of Russian banks, as is the level of liquidity in the economy, energy exports and the standard of living. The influence of those factors on the banking sector is expressed as fewer bad loans, higher profits and greater diversification of business, especially in the small and medium-sized business sector.
www.kommersant.com
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