After five years of crisis and no profits, Russia’s banking is back in profit and starting to grow again. But it's a lacklustre growth as companies are not borrowing and growth is well below potential. The uncertainty over sanctions, who will come after president Vladimir Putin and the increasi
Romania has been growing very fast in recent years and GDP per capita has doubled. But that growth is about to slow and while incomes have soared now the state is running a twin deficit. The country has fallen into a middle income trap and has reached the stage where it needs to break through its
Moldova has long been a money-laundering black hole. Then in 2014 they had a shock when more than $1bn was stolen from the bank sector – equivalent to 15% of GDP. Belatedly the government is now responding. Stakes in three of the countries biggest banks, which together account for about 80% of
The gas war between Ukraine’s national monopolist Naftogaz and the Russian behemoth Gazprom is rushing towards a climax. Last December Naftogaz won a historic $2.6bn award from Gazprom after the Stockholm arbitration court, but Gazprom refused to pay and now the Ukranian energy company is trying t
At the end of April Ukraine’s domestic hryvnia-denominate debt market is set to be hooked up to the international Clearstream payment and settlement system that will open the market to a whole new pool of investment capital. Bond traders will be able to buy and sell Ukraine’s local debt directly
Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev surprised everyone and no one by stepping down from office last month after nearly three decades in power. We are now in a transition phases where Nazarbayev eases himself out of office, but clearly he intends to remain fully in control of the process. On Apr
Russia has many flourishing sectors like oil and agriculture, but the rise of the middle class has given rise to increasingly sophisticated services. bne IntelliNews editor-in-chief Ben Aris talked to KDL’s CEO Yuri Leonov, who runs one of Russia’s largest privately owned medical laboratory s
The Russian leading stock index the dollar denominated Russia Trading System (RTS) has been largely range bound for most of the last four years trading between 1,000 and 1,200, but underneath at the corporate level a lot has been happening. The various crises have caused a consolidation in many s
Everyone needs medicine but Russia is a long way from being able to produce everything for itself; despite the import-substitution drive, Russia remains dependent on imports. Pharmaceuticals is a good example of the development of the retail business and has been largely unaffected by the crises.