| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
Sberbank to Set Markets Into Motion
Players on Russia’s stock market noted yesterday the aggressive performance of Sberbank. The country’s biggest saving bank was buying blue chips at large, fueling indexes by 3.3 percent to 3.76 percent and enabling the national floors to outpace their Western counterparts.
People in Sberbank don’t conceal the several-fold increase in stock deals. But if Sberbank ultimately decides to inject 5 percent of its assets in the stocks, the investments will surpass $7.5 billion, market players calculated.
“The basic purchase was on MICEX and on over-the-counter market,” the traders said, pointing out that Sberbank was buying blue chips of highest liquidity, including Gazprom and LUKOIL.
Contrary to the moderate gains of Western exchanges, Russia’s RTS and MICEX stepped up 3.3 percent and 3.76 percent respectively yesterday. MICEX turnover surpassed 87.2 billion rubles, 1.5 fold above the previous trading. Blue chips manifested the highest advance – Gazprom went up 3.6 percent, LUKOIL jumped 4.2 percent, Rosneft soared 4.1 percent and Norilsk Nickel surged 5.3 percent.
The reasons of Sberbank’s market enthusiasm was probably political, market players speculate, supposing that the actual purpose is to make movement of Russia’s floors matching the strong macroeconomic indicators on the threshold of presidential election. The previous practice of Sberbank was to funnel most of its money into granting credits, which accounted for 76 percent of the bank’s assets.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 13, 2008
|
|
|
