War-Weary Ukraine Shutters Cash-Starved Banks as Trust Falls
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When Vasyl Klos plunked $9,000 into a bank branch in his hometown of Lviv, Ukraine, in 2013, he assumed it was safe because it was German owned. He was wrong.
Bank Forum JSC had already been sold by Commerzbank AG to Ukrainian businessman Vadim Novinsky, a fact Klos only found out as he completed the deposit. He decided it was too late to back out, but within a year, Forum was declared insolvent and the cash was returned to him in hryvnia, whose later plunge cut the value of his original deposit by about half. The experience has left him poorer, but wiser.