The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) is now actively discussing nationalising the troubled bank Otkritie Financial Corporation, though no final decision has yet been taken, Vedomosti reported on August 25, citing four unnamed state bankers.

The bank has been in trouble since the start of this month. Customers have withdrawn billions in deposits and the bank has been forced to sell off its extensive Eurobond holdings and use the CBR’s repo facility to raise extra capital. Even this has been insufficient to put the bank back into good standing. Reports say the CBR extended an unsecured loan to the troubled commercial lender on August 22, as much to shore up frayed nerves in Moscow’s financial sector as to help the bank out. The amount of the loan is not known.

Vedomosti's four unnamed state banking sources claim the regulator is now actively discussing nationalising the bank, which is one of two dozen considered to be “systemically important.” Before the recent run on its accounts Otkritie was Russia’s fourth largest in terms of deposits. Vedomosti’s sources say the chances of a takeover are “very high”, but no decision has been made yet.

The bank is already costing the CBR a lot. In July the bank took a RUB333bn ($5.6bn) loan and currently repo money from the CBR accounts for a fifth of the bank’s liabilities. The repo facility is one of the most expensive forms of funding for banks.

This week’s unsecured CBR loan suggests that the bank is running out of time and has exhausted its options for selling assets. This week Otkritie also sold its operations in Cyprus and it has also sold off its bad debt portfolio, amongst other actions.