Intesa Sanpaolo reviews Russian financing support
Italian banking group Intesa Sanpaolo has put its Russian operations under strategic review, in a move that could hamper financing for the country's oil and gas sector, Reuters reported on March 3, citing a company spokesperson.
Intesa Sanpaolo is one of Europe's biggest banking groups with a €44.6bn ($49.4bn) market capitalisation. It has just under €1bn in capital and assets in Russia and €300mn in Ukraine. Its notable deals over the years include the €5.2bn loan it provided to support Russia's sale of 19.5% of Rosneft to Qatar Petroleum and Glencore in 2017. According to Reuters, it also financed the 16bn m3/yr Blue Stream pipeline, run by Gazprom, Italy's Eni and Turkish pipe operator BOTAŞ. Reuters estimates it had €5.6bn ($6.2bn) in loans on its Russian books at the end of 2021, equating to 1.1% of overall credit exposure.
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The corporate recoil from Russian investments could soon spread to other big European capital banks, Reuters suggested, especially those with lower leverage to the country. A spokesperson for Italy's number two bank UniCredit refused to say whether it would mount a full write down of its Russian assets, which was costed above €1bn. French bank Societe Generale said March 3 its top-standard capital ratio would fall by just 0.5 percentage points if its Russian business was confiscated.